I marked carefully their plan and progress, and do not doubt
their usefulness any more than their uprightness; and beyond all doubt it
was owing chiefly to malignant influence exerted by white men, that they
finally failed in their benevolent designs. But my business is to narrate,
not to discuss.
"My next object was to talk with Red Jacket about Christianity itself. He
was prompt in his replies, and exercised and encouraged frankness, with a
spirit becoming a great man.
"He admitted both its truth and excellence, as adapted to white men. He
said some keenly sarcastic things about the treatment that so good a man
as Jesus, had received from white men. The white men, he said, ought all
to be sent to hell for killing him; but as the Indians had no hand in that
transaction, they were in that matter innocent. Jesus Christ was not sent
to them; the atonement was not made for them; nor the Bible given to them;
and therefore the Christian religion, was not meant for them. If the Great
Spirit had intended that the Indians should be Christians, he would have
made his revelation to them, as well as to the white men. Not having done
so, it was clearly his will that they should continue in the faith of
their fathers. He said that the red man was of a totally different race,
and needed an entirely different religion, and that it was idle as well as
unkind, to try to alter their religion, and give them ours.
"I asked him to point out the difference of the races, contending that
they were one, and needed but one religion, and that Christianity was that
religion, which Christ intended for, and ordered to be preached, to all
men.
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