“Brother, your application for the purchase of our lands is, to our minds, very extraordinary. It has been made in a crooked manner. You have not walked in the straight path, pointed out by the Great Council of your nation. You have no writing from our Great Father the president. We have looked back, and remembered how the Yorkers purchased our lands in former times. They bought them, piece after piece, for a little money, paid to a few men in our nation, and not to all our brethren,—until our planting and hunting grounds have become very small; and if we should sell these, we know not where to spread our blankets.
“Brother, you tell us your employers have purchased of the council of Yorkers, a right to buy our lands. We do not understand how this can be. The lands do not belong to the Yorkers. They are ours, and were given to us by the Great Spirit.
“Brother, you want us to travel with you, and look for other lands. If we should sell our lands, and move off into a distant country, towards the setting sun, we should be looked upon, in the country to which we go, as foreigners and strangers, and be despised by the red, as well as the white men. We should soon be surrounded by the white people, who would there also kill our game, come upon our lands, and try to get them from us.
“Brother, we are determined not to sell our lands, but to continue on them. They are fruitful, and produce us corn in abundance, for the support of our women and children, and grass and herbs for our cattle.
“Brother, the white people buy and sell false rights to our lands; and your employers, you say, have paid a great price for their right. They must have plenty of money to spend it buying and selling false rights to lands belonging to Indians. The loss of it will not hurt them, but our lands are of great value to us; and we wish you to go back to your employers, and tell them and the Yorkers, that they have no right to buy and sell false rights to our lands.”
Although the inducements held out to Indians at this time were rejected, yet the scheme, on the part of the applicants, was by no means abandoned; and as a measure like this, so inimical to the cause in which Friends were engaged, could not fail of exciting considerable alarm, it was reasonable to suppose, their influence would interpose to prevent the adoption of a measure so pregnant of evil to the poor Indians. Accordingly, an appropriate address was presented to the Seneca nation, strongly recommending them to a diligent improvement of their land, and to keep strong in their resolution not to part with it—for if they should sell and remove to a distant country, it was not likely Friends would go with them, or assist them, as they had heretofore done.
The minds of the Indians appeared to be quieted for the present, and they were peculiarly pleased with the communications of Friends on this occasion. One of their chiefs observed in council—“Your words reached our hearts, and as though they had been handed down from the Great Spirit above, they have satisfied our minds.”
The spring of 1812, commenced with very encouraging prospects of improvement at both the settlements. The women were engaged in their spinning business, and the men in their agricultural pursuits, which relieved the women of much of their former hardships and burthens in procuring a livelihood. The measures adopted for their improvement had now been in operation at the Alleghany settlement for fourteen years, and the advantages resulting therefrom were more sensibly felt, and clearly distinguished by the Indians than at any former period. The progress of the Indians at Cattaraugus, considering the infant state of the establishment of Friends there, afforded the most sanguine prospect, that, by a steady perseverance, in the course of a few years more, a very important change would be effected in their situation and manner of life. But a reverse of circumstances, in the course of events, again took place, which it seems proper now to mention.
It was in the Sixth month, this year, that war was proclaimed by the United States against Great Britain, and her dependencies. This circumstance created very considerable alarm amongst the Indians, and to use their own expressions, “seemed to turn the world upside down.”
Their situation was peculiarly trying. War was a circumstance replete with many evils, which would inevitably involve them in serious difficulties. Their money, for which they had sold their land in 1797, was in the hands of the government. Their remaining lands were nearly all within the boundaries of the state of New York, and lying near to the British lines, which it was probable would become the seat of war, and therefore they would be liable to be much harassed by either party, even should they remain neutral. In the next place, there were several tribes of their confederates of the Six Nations, whom they had always considered as brethren, who resided within the British dominions, and called upon to fight their battles; and it was probable they would be called upon by the United States to assist in the contest, and thus they would be reduced to the sad dilemma, of either being considered, in case of a refusal, as enemies to the United States, or otherwise be under the necessity of raising the hatchet against their own flesh and blood, who had not given the slightest cause of offence or provocation.