“We understand your Great Spirit gave you a book, the Bible, telling you how to live peacefully together, but that your people are too stupid to obey this book. Even without a book, we are able to do as our shamans tell us, and so to live in peace. In your country, we hear, men persecute other men for holding beliefs contrary to those which are popular. We hear your countrymen claim to be fighting for freedom and liberty, and yet hold innumerable slaves. We are told your most honorable men deprive Indians of their lands by fraud and misrepresentation: then sell it to their own people for large sums. Others, we hear, hold beaver skins in greater veneration than bravery or honor, and employ men to poison and kill Indians in order to add to their store of beaver skins. In your country, we hear, wrong-doers are choked to death like dogs: men shut up in prison when they cannot pay a debt: little children whipped for ignorant mistakes. Your Great Spirit, we are told, is cruel, and showed his love for his own son by allowing him to be tortured and killed. We are told that when a man does wrong, your Great Spirit punishes that man’s sons and grandsons and great-grandsons. None of these things are proper or just, according to our views.”

“Me too,” Doc muttered.

Pahokuk went on: “We hear that in your country a man is admitted to the highest councils if he has succeeded in stealing or hiding more pieces of money than his neighbors. We hear men put such a value on food and clothing that the poor often freeze and starve, even when thousands have plenty. We have heard nothing is so sacred in your country as the pursuit of wealth; that in its pursuit, a few men are permitted to dirty the waters of a river so that no other man can take fish from it, or to make a smoke over the land so that all others find it hideous. We cannot credit it, but we have heard young men from your country will not fight unless paid for doing so, even when their homes are threatened: that only one-tenth of your young men will go to war, though your nation be on the brink of ruin.”

I didn’t dare meet Pahokuk’s eye. I was too ashamed.