"Again assuming the pleading tones of a supplicant, he said, 'when you first came here, you clung around our knee, and called us FATHER. We took you by the hand and called you BROTHERS. You have grown greater than we, so that we can no longer reach up to your hand. But we wish to cling around your knee, and be called YOUR CHILDREN.'"
In this same speech, referring to their services during the late war with
England, he said:
"Not long ago you raised the war-club against him, who was once our great Father over the waters. You asked us to go with you to the war. It was not our quarrel. We knew not that you were right. We asked not; we cared not; it was enough for us, that you were our brothers. We went with you to the battle. We fought and bled for you; and now," his eye kindling with emotion, and the deepest feeling indicated in his utterance, as he pointed to some Indians present, that had been wounded in that contest; "and now, dare you pretend to us, that our Father the President, while he sees our blood running, yet fresh from the wounds received, while fighting his battles, has sent you with a message to persuade us to relinquish the poor remains of our once boundless possessions; to sell the birth place of our children, and the graves of our fathers! No! Sooner than believe that he gave you this message, we will believe that you have stolen your commission, and are a cheat and a liar."
Once more, speaking of the pre-emptive right and the assurance given them that their lands were desired only in return for a fair equivalent of their value, he called their attention to the great cessions the Indians had already made, together with the solemn declarations that they should not be importuned to relinquish their remaining reservations, he said: "You tell us of your claim to our land, and that you have purchased it from your State. We know nothing of your claim, and we care nothing for it. Even the whites have a law by which they cannot sell what they do not own. How then has your State, which never owned our land, sold it to you? We have a title to it, and we know that our title is good; for it came direct from the Great Spirit, who gave it to us, his red children. When you can ascend where he is," pointing toward the skies, "and will get his deed, and show it to us, then, and never till then, will we acknowledge your title. You say you came not to cheat us of our lands, but to buy them. Who told you that we have lands to sell? You never heard it from us."
Then rising up and giving Mr. Ogden a look of deep earnestness, if not of indignation, he said:
"Did I not tell you the last time we met, that whilst Red Jacket lived, you would get no more lands of the Indians? How then, while you see him alive and strong," striking his hand violently on his breast, "do you think to make him a liar?"
The persistence with which the Senecas were importuned to sell their lands, led them to make an appeal to the president, and afterward to the governor of New York.
The latter, Governor De Witt Clinton, sent them a reply worthy of his name and office. It is as follows:
"All the right that Ogden and his company have to your reservations, is the right of purchasing them when you think it expedient to sell them, that is, they can buy your lands, but no other person can. You may retain them as long as you please, and you may sell them to Ogden as soon as you please. You are the owners of these lands in the same way that your brethren the Oneidas, are of their reservations. They are all that is left of what the Great Spirit gave to your ancestors. No man shall deprive you of them without your consent. The State will protect you in the full enjoyment of your property. We are strong and willing to shield you from oppression. The Great Spirit looks down on the conduct of mankind, and will punish us if we permit the remnant of the Indian nations which is with us to be injured. We feel for you, brethren; we shall watch over your interests. We know that in a future world we shall be called upon to answer for our conduct to our fellow creatures."
Col. Stone refers to the Hon. Albert H. Tracy, as having furnished the notes of the council we have just been considering. The same authority speaking of the eloquence of Red Jacket, says: "It is evident that the best translations of Indian speeches, must fail to express the beauty and sublimity of the originals; especially of such an original as Red Jacket. It has been my good fortune to hear him a few times, but only of late years, and when his powers were enfeebled by age, and still more, by intemperance. But I shall never forget the impression made on me, the first time I saw him in council: