What did George Washington say about Native Americans?

My views on the Indian nations were neither simple nor uniform, and I think it honest to present them in their full complexity. I held a firm conviction that the general government alone — not individual states, not land speculators — must conduct relations with Native peoples. As I wrote to James Duane in 1783, “To suffer a wide extended Country to be over run with Land Jobbers, Speculators, and Monopolisers or even with scatter’d settlers, is, in my opinion, inconsistent with that wisdom and policy which our true interest dictates” and was, moreover, pregnant with bloodshed and injustice. I tried to be plain with the Indian nations themselves about what protections the government would afford them. To the Seneca chiefs I declared that “The general government will never consent to your being defrauded. But it will protect you in all your just rights” Yet I was also candid that our own citizens were often the aggressors. In a letter written during my presidency, I observed that Native peoples “have no Press thro’ which their grievances are related; and it is well known, that when one side only of a Story is heard, and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it, insensibly” I do not pretend my record was without contradiction. I authorized military expeditions against hostile tribes. I used language — "savages," "deluded people" — that reflected the prejudices of my age. I believed that agricultural civilization was the path to native flourishing, a paternalism I did not question as I should have. History must weigh all of this.