the rivers on the north side of the Missouri. For guides along these rivers, we must make arrangements with the nations inhabiting them.

My Children, I was sorry to learn that a schism had taken place in your nation, and that a part of your people had withdrawn with the Great-Track to the Arkansas river. We will send an agent to them, and will use our best offices to induce them to return, and to live in union with you. We wish to make them also our friends, and to make that friendship, and the weight it may give us with them, useful to you and them.

We propose, my children, immediately to establish an agent to reside with you, who will speak to you our words, and convey yours to us, who will be the guardian of our peace and friendship, convey truths from one to the other, dissipate all falsehoods which might tend to alienate and divide us, and maintain a good understanding and friendship between us. As the distance is too great for you to come often and tell us your wants, you will tell them to him on the spot, and he will convey them to us in writing, so that we shall be sure that they come from you. Through the intervention of such an agent we shall hope that our friendship will forever be preserved. No wrong will ever be done you by our nation, and we trust that yours will do none to us. And should ungovernable individuals commit unauthorized outrage on either side, let them be duly punished; or if they escape, let us make to each other the best satisfaction the case admits, and not let our peace be broken by bad men. For all people have some bad men among them, whom no laws can restrain.

As you have taken so long a journey to see your father, we wish you not to return till you shall have visited our country and towns toward the sea coast. This will be new and satisfactory to you, and it will give you the same knowledge of the country on this side the Mississippi, which we are endeavoring to acquire of that on the other side, by sending trusty persons to explore them. We propose to do in your country only what we are desirous you should do in ours. We will provide accommodations for your journey, for your comfort while engaged in it,

and for your return in safety to your own country, carrying with you those proofs of esteem with which we distinguish our friends, and shall particularly distinguish you. On your return tell your people that I take them all by the hand; that I become their father hereafter; that they shall know our nation only as friends and benefactors; that we have no views upon them but to carry on a commerce useful to them and us; to keep them in peace with their neighbors, that their children may mutiply, may grow up and live to a good old age, and their women no more fear the tomahawk of any enemy.

My children, these are my words, carry them to your nation, keep them in your memories, and our friendship in your hearts, and may the Great Spirit look down upon us and cover us with the mantle of his love.

IX.

March 7, 1705.

My Children, Chiefs of the Chickasaw nation, Minghey, Mataha, and Tishohotana :

I am happy to receive you at the seat of the government of the twenty-two nations, and to take you by the hand. Your friendship to the Americans has long been known to me. Our fathers have told us that your nation never spilled the blood of an American, and we have seen you fighting by our side and cementing our friendship by mixing our blood in battle against the same enemies. I rejoice, therefore, that the Great Spirit has covered you with his protection through so long a journey and so inclement a season, and brought you safe to the dwelling of a father who wishes well to all his red children, and to you especially. It would have been also pleasing to have received the other chiefs who had proposed to come with you, and to have known and become known to them, had it been convenient for them to come. I have long wished to see the beloved men of your nation, to renew the friendly conferences of former times, to assure them that we remain constant in our attachment to them, and to prove it by our good offices.

Your country, like all those on this side the Mississippi, has no longer game sufficient to maintain yourselves, your women and children, comfortably by hunting. We, therefore, wish to see you undertake the cultivation of the earth, to raise cattle, corn, and cotton, to feed and clothe your people. A little labor in the earth will produce more food than the best hunts you can now make, and the women will spin and weave more clothing than the men can procure by hunting. We shall very willingly assist you in this course by furnishing you with the necessary tools and implements, and with persons to instruct you in the use of them.

We have been told that you have contracted a great debt to some British traders, which gives you uneasiness, and which you honestly wish to pay by the sale of some of your lands. Whenever you raise food from the earth, and make your own clothing, you will find that you have a great deal of land more than you can cultivate or make useful, and that it will be better for you to sell some of that, to pay your debts, and to have something over to be paid to you annually to aid you in feeding and clothing yourselves. Your lands are your own, my children, they shall never be taken from you by our people or any others. You will be free to keep or to sell as yourselves shall think most for your own good. If at this time you think it will be better for you to dispose of some of them to pay your debts, and to help your people to improve the rest, we are willing to buy on reasonable terms. Our people multiply so fast that it will suit us to buy as much as you wish to sell, but only according to your good will. We have lately obtained from the French and Spaniards all the country beyond the Mississippi called Louisiana, in which there is a great deal of land unoccupied by any red men. But it is very far off, and we would prefer giving you lands there, or money and goods as you like best, for such parts of your land on this side the Mississippi as you are disposed to part with. Should you have anything to say on this subject now, or at any future time, we shall be always ready to listen to you.

I am obliged, within a few days, to set out on a long journey; but I wish you to stay and rest yourselves according to your own

convenience. The Secretary at War will take care of you, will have you supplied with whatever you may have occasion for, and will provide for your return at your own pleasure. And I hope you will carry to your countrymen assurances of the sincere friendship of the United States to them, and that we shall always be disposed to render them all the service in our power. This, my children, is all I had proposed to say at this time.

X.

To the Wolf and people of the Mandar nation. WASHINGTON, December 30, 1806. My Children, the Wolf and people of the Mandar nation :— I take you by the hand of friendship and give you a hearty welcome to the seat of the government of the United States. The journey which you have taken to visit your fathers on this side of our island is a long one, and your having undertaken it is a proof that you desired to become acquainted with us. I thank the Great Spirit that he has protected you through the journey and brought you safely to the residence of your friends, and I hope He will have you constantly in his safe keeping, and restore you in good health to your nations and families.

My friends and children, we are descended from the old nations which live beyond the great water, but we and our forefathers have been so long here that we seem like you to have grown out of this land. We consider ourselves no longer of the old nations beyond the great water, but as united in one family with our red brethren here. The French, the English, the Spaniards, have now agreed with us to retire from all the country which you and we hold between Canada and Mexico, and never more to return to it. And remember the words I now speak to you, my children, they are never to return again. We are now your fathers; and you shall not lose by the change. As soon as Spain had agreed to withdraw from all the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi, I felt the desire of becoming acquainted with all my red children beyond the Mississippi, and of uniting them with us as we have those on this side of that river, in the bonds of

peace and friendship. I wished to learn what we could do to benefit them by furnishing them the necessaries they want in exchange for their furs and peltries. I therefore sent our beloved man, Captain Lewis, one of my own family, to go up the Missouri river to get acquainted with all the Indian nations in its neighborhood, to take them by the hand, deliver my talks to them, and to inform us in what way we could be useful to them. Your nation received him kindly, you have taken him by the hand and been friendly to him. My children, I thank you for the services you rendered him, and for your attention to his words. He will now tell us where we should establish trading houses to be convenient to you all, and what we must send to them.

My friends and children, I have now an important advice to give you. I have already told you that you and all the red men are my children, and I wish you to live in peace and friendship with one another as brethren of the same family ought to do. How much better is it for neighbors to help than to hurt one another; how much happier must it make them. If you will cease to make war on one another, if you will live in friendship with all mankind, you can employ all your time in providing food and clothing for yourselves and your families. Your men will not be destroyed in war, and your women and children will lie down to sleep in their cabins without fear of being surprised by their enemies and killed or carried away. Your numbers will be increased instead of diminishing, and you will live in plenty and in quiet. My children, I have given this advice to all your red brethren on this side of the Mississippi; they are following it, they are increasing in their numbers, are learning to clothe and provide for their families as we do. Remember then my advice, my children, carry it home to your people, and tell them that from the day that they have become all of the same family, from the day that we became father to them all, we wish, as a true father should do, that we may all live together as one household, and that before they strike one another, they should go to their father and let him endeavor to make up the quarrel.

My children, you are come from the other side of our great island, from where the sun sets, to see your new friends at the