“We have confidence in you. You cannot see your red children, with their little ones, driven off by stealth and fraud—leaving the sepulchres of their fathers, their farms, their farming tools, and their cattle, and dying by families on the road, through hardships and privation—exchanging all their advances in civilization and its comforts, for the hardships of the chase—without house or friend.
“Father, we have confidence in you, that if you see any device formed against us, you will frustrate it, and succour your red children. We have deceived no man—we have wronged no man—our language has been one—we choose not to part with our land. If we have been needlessly alarmed, you will pity our ignorance, and forgive our childish fears.
“We trust that you will pardon the multitude of our words. Let none deceive you in saying that this is the voice of a few individuals, and not the voice of the Six Nations. It is the voice of the Six Nations in the state of New York. The chiefs of Buffalo, Cattaraugus, Genessee, and Onondago, are now in council. We have the message of Oneida and Alleghany with us, desiring we should speak to our father the president—intreating him to consider and help us. Speak, father—speak to your children, that their minds may be at rest. Speak to our council fire at this place, and let us hear your own words; send them by safe hands.
“May the Great Spirit preserve you many years a blessing to all your children.”
The Indians also sent a copy of the foregoing talk to the governor of New York, accompanied with a short address, from which we make the following extracts:
“Father, we thank you that you feel anxious to do all you can to the perishing ruins of your red children. We hope, Father, you will make a fence strong and high around us, that wicked white men may not devour us at once, but let us live as long as we can. We are persuaded you will do this for us, because our field is laid waste and trodden down by every beast—we are feeble and cannot resist them.”
“Father, we are persuaded you will do this for the sake of our white brothers, lest God, who has appeared so strong in building up white men and pulling down Indians, should turn his hand and visit our white brothers for their sins, and call them to an account for all the wrongs they have done them, and all the wrongs they have not prevented, that it was in their power to prevent, to their poor red brothers, who have no helper.
“Father, would you be the father of your people and make them good and blessed of God, let not the cries of his red children ascend into his ears against you.”
Without further comment on these impressive communications of the Indians, we shall leave the reader to his own reflections, after stating, that whatever impressions they might have made on the rulers to whom they were addressed, it did not prevent the renewed and persevering applications of the pre-emption holders, to obtain the Indians’ land, which, although they as often refused to sell, had the effect to keep them in a state of agitation and unsettlement; for although they had been repeatedly told that their lands were their own, and that they could not be compelled to dispose of them without their consent, and that President Washington had fully assured them that the United States would protect them in the remainder of their lands, which they had not legally conveyed away at public treaties, yet there appeared to be a degree of jealousy existing with some, as to the sincerity of these professions, and a fear lest they might, at some time, be compelled to relinquish their rightful possessions and be removed to another clime.