Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

“At the Time of Bushy Run,” confides Ives LeSpark, “— and I have seen the very Document,— General Bouquet and General Gage both sign’d off on expenditures to replace Hospital Blankets us’d ’to convey the Small-pox to the Indians,’ as they perhaps too clearly stipulated. To my knowledge,” marvels Ives, “this had never been attempted, on the part of any modern Army, till then.” “Yes, Wicks?” Mr. LeSpark beaming at the Revd, “You wish’d to add something? You may ever speak freely here,— killing Indians having long ago ceas’d to figure as a sensitive Topick in this House.” “Since you put it that way,” the Revd, in will’d Cheeriness, “firstly,— ev’ryone knew about the British infection of the Indians, and no one spoke out. The Paxton Boys were but implementing this same Wicked Policy of extermination, using Rifles instead,— altho’,— Secondly, unlike our own more virtuous Day, no one back then, was free from Sin. Quakers, as handsomely as Traders of less pacific Faiths, profited from the sale of Weapons to the Indians, including counterfeit Brown Besses that blew up in the faces of their Purchasers, as often as fell’d any White Settlers.