The Newport Gazette

The Printer lays the following Speech of General BURGOYNE before the Public, convinced the spirit it breathes will fully dissipate every suspicion of cruelty being practiced by his Order, or even intended in his transactions with the Indians, must confound his calumniators, and cover the abettors of rebellion with infamy.

Substance of the Speech of Lieutenant General Burgoyne, to the Indians, in Congress, at the Camp, upon the River Bouquet, June 21, 1777, and their ANSWER.

Chiefs and Warriors,

The Great King, our common father, and the patron of all who seek and deserve his protection, has considered with satisfaction the general conduct of the Indian tribes from the beginning of the troubles in America.

Too sagacious and too faithful to be deluded or corrupted, they have observed the violated rights of the parental power they love, and burned to vindicate them. A few individuals alone, the refuse of a small tribe, at the instigation were led astray, and the misrepresentations, the specious allurements, the insidious promises and divided plots, in which the rebels are exercised, and all of which they employed for that effect, have served only in the end to enhance the honour of the tribes in general, by demonstrating to the world, how few and how contemptible are the apostates.

It is a truth known to you all, that these pitiful examples excepted, and they probably before this day hid their faces in shame. The collective voices and hands of the Indian tribes over this vast continent are on the side of justice.

The restraint you have put upon your regiment in waiting the King your father's call to arms, the hardest proof, I am persuaded, to which your affection could have been put, is another manifest and affected mark of your adherence to that principle of connexion to which you were always fond to allude, and which it is mutually the joy and the duty of the parent to strengthen.

The clemency of your father has been abused, the offers of his mercy have been despised, and his paternal patience would, unless, become culpable, in as much as it would withhold redress from the most grievous oppressions in his provinces that ever disgraced the history of mankind. It therefore remains for me, the General of one of his Majesty's armies, and in this town his sovereign representative, to release you from those bonds which your obedience imposed. Warriors, you are free. Go, bring the might of your valour and your strength as the common enemies of Great-Britain and America - disturbers of public order, peace and happiness, - destroyers of commerce, parricides of the state.

The circle round you, the chiefs of his Majesty's European forces, and of the Princes his allies, esteem you as brothers in the war; emulate in glory and in friendship, we will endeavour reciprocally to give and to receive examples; we know how to value, and we will strive to imitate your perseverance in enterprises, and your constancy to resist hunger, weariness, and pain. Be it our task, from the dictates of our religion, the laws of our warfare, and the principles and interest of our policy, to regulate your passions, when they overbear, to point out where it is nobler to spare than to revenge, to discriminate degrees of guilt, to suspend the uplifted hatchet, to chasten, and not to destroy.

This war, as you, my friends, is now a very different case from former occasions. In taking the field, you held yourselves authorized to destroy wherever you came, because everywhere you found an enemy. The case now is very different.

The King has many faithful subjects dispersed in the provinces, consequently you have many brothers there and their people are the more to be pitied that they are persecuted or imprisoned, wherever they are discovered, or slighted, and to dissemble, is to a generous mind, a lot more grievous punishment.

Persuaded that your magnanimity of character, joined to your principles of affection to the King, will give me fuller control over your minds than the military rank with which I am invested, I enjoin your most serious attention to the rules which I hereby proclaim for your invariable observation during the campaign.

I positively forbid bloodshed, when you are not opposed in arms.

Aged men, women, children, and prisoners, must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict.

You shall receive compensation for the prisoners you take, but you shall be called to an account for scalps. In conformity and indulgence to your customs, which have affixed an idea of honour to such badges of victory, you shall be allowed to take the scalps of the dead, when killed by your fire, and in fair opposition; but on no account or pretence, or subtlety, or prevarication, are they to be taken from the wounded, or even dying; and still less pardonable, if possible, will be held, to kill men in that condition, on purpose, and upon a supposition, that this prohibition to the wounded, would be thereby evaded.

As to lurking assassins, incendiaries, ravagers, and plunderers of the country, to whatever army they may belong, shall be treated with less reserve; but the latitude must be given you by order, and I must be the judge of the occasion.

Should the enemy, on their part, dare to countenance acts of barbarity towards those who may fall into their hands, it shall be yours also to retaliate; but till severity shall be thus compelled, bear immoveable in your hearts this solid maxim, it cannot be too deeply impressed, that the great essential reward, worthy service of your alliance, the sincerity of your zeal to the King your father, and never-failing protector, will be examined, and judged upon the test only of your steady and uniform adherence to the orders and counsels of those to whom his Majesty has intrusted the direction and the honour of his arms.

ANSWER FROM AN OLD CHIEF OF THE ONONDAGAS:

I stand up in the name of all the nations present, to assure our father, that we have attentively listened to his discourse. We receive you as our father, because when you speak, we hear the voice of our great father beyond the great lake.

We rejoice in the approbation you have expressed of our behaviour.

We have been tried and attempted by the Bostonians: but we have loved our father, and our hatchets have been sharpened upon our affections.

In proof of the sincerity of our professions, our whole villages able to go to war are come forth. The old and infirm, our infants and our wives alone remain at home.

With one common effort we promise constant obedience to all you have ordered, and all you shall order: and may the father of days give you many and success.