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Many people have called all this an ingenious piece of hypocrisy on the part of the Prophet, and whether it be so or not, I cannot decide; yet one thing I can vouch to be true, that whether his motives and his life be as pure as he pretends or not, his example has done much towards correcting the habits of his people, and has effectually turned their attention from the destructive habits of dissipation and vice, to temperance and industry, in the pursuits of agriculture and the arts. The world may still be unwilling to allow him much credit for this, but I am ready to award him a great deal, who can by his influence thus far arrest the miseries of dissipation and the horrid deformities of vice, in the descending prospects of a nation who have so long had, and still have, the white-skin teachers of vices and dissipation amongst them.
Besides these two chiefs, I have also painted Ma-shee-na (the elk’s horn) Ke-chim-qua (the big bear), warriors, and Ah-tee-wot-o-mee, and She-nah-wee, women of the same tribe, whose portraits are in the Gallery.
WEE-AHS.
These are also the remnant of a once powerful tribe, and reduced by the same causes, to the number of 200. This tribe formerly lived in the State of Indiana, and have been moved with the Piankeshaws, to a position forty or fifty miles south of Fort Leavenworth.
Go-to-kow-pah-a (he who stands by himself, [plate 187]), and Wa-pon-je-a (the swan), are two of the most distinguished warriors of the tribe, both with intelligent European heads.