“How many times were the treaties a hypocritical mask covering embarrassing corruption beneath the pretense of legality?” wondered Jean Pictet, a Swiss gentleman responsible for renovating the laws of war in the later twentieth century, while writing American history on the side. “It is hard to understand how men who were respectable in their own society could show so much duplicity when they dealt with the natives. But then, why should pens have been less mendacious than forked tongues?”