XXVI.
January 10, 1809.
To the Chiefs of the Wyandots, Ottawas, Chippewas, Powtewatamies and Shawanese:—
My Children,—This is the first time I have had the pleasure of seeing the distinguished men of our neighbors the Wyandots, Ottawas and Chippewas, at the seat of our government. I welcome you to it as well as the Powtewatamies and Shawanese, and thank the Great Spirit for having conducted you hither in safety and health. I take you and your people by the hand and salute you as my children; I consider all my red children as forming one family with the whites, born in the same land with them, and bound to live like brethren, in peace, friendship and good neighborhood. In former times, my children, we were not our own masters, but were governed by the English. Then we were often at war with our neighbors. Ill blood was raised and kept up between us, and in the war in which we threw off the English government, many of the red people, mistaking their brothers and real friends, took sides with the English government against us; and it was not till many years after we made peace with the English, that the treaty of Grenville closed our last wars with our Indian neighbors. From that time, my children, we have looked on you as a part of ourselves, and have cherished your prosperity as our own. We saw that these things were wasting away your numbers to nothing; that the intemperate use of ardent spirits produced poverty, trouble and murders among you; your wars with one another were lessening your numbers, and attachment to the hunter life, after game had nearly left you, produced famine, sickness and deaths among you in the scarce season of every year. It has been our endeavor, therefore, like true fathers and brothers, to withhold strong liquors from you, to keep you in peace with one another, and to encourage and aid you in the culture of the earth, and raising domestic animals, to take the place of the wild ones. This we have done, my children, because we are your friends, and wish you well. If we feared you, if we were your enemies, we should have furnished you plentifully with whiskey, let the men destroy one another in perpetual wars, and the women and children waste away for want of food, and remain insensible that they could raise it out of the earth. We have been told, my children, that some of you have been doubting whether we or the English were your truest friends. What do the English do for you? They furnish you with plenty of whiskey, to keep you in idleness, drunkenness and poverty; and they are now exciting you to join them in war against us, if war should take place between them and us. But we tell you to stay at home in quiet, to take no part in quarrels which do not concern you. The English are now at war with all the world but us, and it is not yet known whether they will not force us also into it. They are strong on the water, but weak on the land. We live on the land and we fear them not. We are able to fight our own battles; therefore we do not ask you to spill your blood in our quarrels, much less do we wish to be forced to spill it with our own hands. You have travelled through our country from the lakes to the tide waters. You have seen our numbers in that direction, and were you to pass along the sea shore you would find them much greater. You know the English numbers, their scattered forts and string of people, along the borders of the lakes and the St. Lawrence, how long do you think it will take us to sweep them out of the country? and when they are swept away, what is to become of those who join them in their war against us? My children, if you love the land in which you were born, if you wish to inhabit the earth which covers the bones of your fathers, take no part in the war between the English and us, if we should have war. Never will we do an unjust act towards you. On the contrary, we wish to befriend you in every possible way; but the tribe which shall begin an unprovoked war against us, we will extirpate from the earth, or drive to such a distance as that they shall never again be able to strike us. I tell you these things my children, not to make you afraid. I know you are brave men and therefore cannot fear. But you are also wise men and prudent men. I say it, therefore, that, in your wisdom and prudence, you may look forward. That you may go to the graves of your fathers and say, "fathers, shall we abandon you?" That you may look in the faces of your wives and children and ask, "shall we expose these our own flesh and blood to perish from want in a distant country and have our race and name extinguished from the face of the earth?" Think of these things, my children, as wise men, and as men loving their fathers, their wives and children, and the name and memory of their nation. I repeat, that we will never do an unjust act towards you. On the contrary, we wish you to live in peace, to increase in numbers, to learn to labor as we do, and furnish food for your increasing numbers, when the game shall have left you. We wish to see you possessed of property, and protecting it by regular laws. In time, you will be as we are; you will become one people with us. Your blood will mix with ours; and will spread, with ours, over this great island. Hold fast then, my children, the chain of friendship which binds us together, and join us in keeping it forever bright and unbroken.
I invite you to come here, my children, that you might hear with your own ears, the words of your father; that you might see with your own eyes, the sincere disposition of the United States towards you. In your journey to this place you have seen great numbers of your white brothers; you have been received by them as brothers, have been treated kindly and hospitably, and you have seen and can tell your people that their hearts are now sincerely with you. This is the first time I have ever addressed your chiefs, in person, at the seat of Government,—it will also be the last. Sensible that I am become too old to watch over the extensive concerns of the seventeen States and their territories, I requested my fellow citizens to permit me to retire to live with my family, and to choose another President for themselves, and father for you. They have done so; and in a short time I shall retire and resign into his hands the care of your and our concerns. Be assured, my children, that he will have the same friendly dispositions towards you which I have had, and that you will find in him a true and affectionate father. Indeed this is now the disposition of all our people towards you; they look upon you as brethren, born in the same land, and having the same interests. Tell your people, therefore, to entertain no uneasiness on account of this change, for there will be no change as to them. Deliver to them my adieus, and my prayers to the Great Spirit for their happiness. Tell them that during my administration, I have held their hand fast in mine; and that I will put it into the hand of their new father, who will hold it as I have done.
XXVII.
January 18, 1809.
To the Chiefs of the Ottawas, Chippewas, Powtewatamies, Shawanese and Wyandots:—
My Children,—I have considered the speech you have delivered me, and will now make answer to it. You have gone back to ancient times, and given a true history of the uses made of you by the French, who first inhabited your country, and afterwards by the English; and how they used you as dogs to set upon those whom they wanted to destroy. They kept the hatchet always in your hand, exposing you to be killed in their quarrels, and then gave you whiskey that you might quarrel and kill one another. I am glad you understand these things, and are determined no more to fight their battles. We shall never wish you to fight ours, but to stay at home in peace and take care of yourselves. You still wish, however, to keep up a correspondence with the English, because you say your young people find an advantage in it. The less you have to do with them the better, because all their endeavors will be, as you know, to persuade you to go to war for them. If they owe you for lands, they ought to pay you once for all and be done with it. With respect to your people on the English side of the water, should we have war with the English, let them remain neutral and we shall not disturb them; but if the English should endeavor to force them into the war, you would do well to receive them and let them live with you till we can clear the way for them to go back again, which will not take long.
You ask me what passed between this Government and the Little Turtle, the chiefs of the Chippewas, Powtewatamies, Shawanese, Ottawas, Isaac Williams, the Crane and the Delawares, at their visits to the seat of this Government many years ago. Those visits were in the time of my predecessors, so that I did not hear their speeches, and they did not leave them in writing. It is not in my power, therefore, to tell you what they were. But I can assure you that when the Little Turtle visited me, and in like manner when the chiefs of other tribes have visited me, not one word was ever said to the prejudice of the other Indians. I have no reason to believe they wished to speak to me in that way, but if they did, they knew I would not listen to them, and therefore did not do it. My advice to them all has been constantly to live in peace and friendship with one another, to begin to cultivate the earth, to raise domestic animals, and leave off the use of ardent spirits: in short, precisely what I have said to yourselves.