Do you know when I first discovered my Master, Margaret? It was when I was fifteen years old. I was hunting deer and came upon a party of Delaware Indians. There were five of them, and four were bathing in a pool of the creek that bordered my father’s farm. Four were bucks and one was a female. The bucks were teasing the girl, trying to induce her to remove her clothing and join them in their nakedness in the pool. She was attempting halfheartedly to hide in the bushes, but she was not disinterested enough to leave the scene, nor was she too shy to peer out from between the fingers with which she was covering her eyes.

I was on a hillside above the creek, unseen by the Indians. I watched them for a while and then an inner voice told me to kill them. I will not say that I felt threatened by the Indians, nor did I think that they were a threat to my family or community. These local Delawares had been Christianized for several years and they were regarded as harmless. Also, I will not say—as it was later thought by some—that I wanted to avenge my brother, who had died at the hands of Delawares many years before. Avenging someone presumes a certain amount of feeling for that person, or at least the feeling that one’s own honor has been injured. I never even knew my brother Enoch, and I have never been much concerned with personal or family honor.

No, the voice within me simply said that it would be immensely pleasing to kill the Indians and that I could gain additional pleasure from the girl if I killed her last. And so I began to pick off the bucks. I was an excellent marksman and I could pour powder and ram lead in seconds, so that none of them had the slightest chance to escape. Furthermore I kept moving behind the trees and through the underbrush so that they couldn’t identify the source of their doom. Even the last buck to fall was not looking in my direction when the ball entered his heart.