Truth requires candor, impartiality, honesty, research,
and industry; but a falsehood, whether designed or not, stands in
need of neither. Of that which is the most easily produced, the
country gets the most; and it were idle to imagine that a people who
blindly and unresistingly submit to be put, as it might be, under
the feet of falsehood, as respects all their own public men, can
ever get very accurate notions of those of other nations.
Thus was it with Onoah. His name was unknown to the whites, except
as a terrible and much-dreaded avenger of the wrongs of his race.
With the red men it was very different. They had no "forked tongues"
to make falsehood take the place of truth; or if such existed they
were not believed. The Pottawattamies now present knew all about
Tecumseh, [Footnote: A "tiger stooping for his prey."] of whom the
whites had also various and ample accounts. This Shawanee chief had
long been active among them, and his influence was extended far and
near. He was a bold, restless, and ingenious warrior; one, perhaps,
who better understood the art of war, as it was practised among red
men, than any Indian then living.
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