who had charge of all the agents, for permission to
go to Washington for that purpose.

This satisfied us for a time. We started to our hunting grounds with
good hopes that something would be done for us. Doing the winter I
received information that three families of whites had come to our
village and destroyed some of our lodges, were making fences and
dividing our cornfields for their own use. They were quarreling among
themselves about their lines of division. I started immediately for
Rock river, a distance of ten days' travel, and on my arrival found the
report true. I went to my lodge and saw a family occupying it. I wished
to talk to them but they could not understand me. I then went to Rock
Island; the agent being absent, I told the interpreter what I wanted to
say to these people, viz: "Not to settle on our lands, nor trouble our
fences, that there was plenty of land in the country for them to settle
upon, and that they must leave our village, as we were coming back to
it in the spring." The interpreter wrote me a paper, I went back to the
village and showed it to the intruders, but could not understand their
reply. I presumed, however, that they would remove as I expected them
to. I returned to Rock Island, passed the night there and had a long
conversation with the trader. He advised me to give up and make my
village with Keokuk on the Iowa river. I told him that I would not. The
next morning I crossed the Mississippi on very bad ice, but the Great
Spirit had made it strong, that I might pass over safe. I traveled three
days farther to see the Winnebago sub-agent and converse with him about
our difficulties. He gave no better news than the trader had done. I
then started by way of Rock river, to see the Prophet, believing that he
as a man of great knowledge. When we met, I explained to him everything
as it was. He at once agreed that I was right, and advised me never to
give up our village, for the whites to plow up the bones of our people.
He said, that if we remained at our village, the whites would not
trouble us, and advised me to get Keokuk, and the party that consented
to go with him to the Iowa in the spring, to return and remain at our
village.

I returned to my hunting ground, after an absence of one moon, and
related what I had done. In a short time we came up to our village, and
found that the whites had not left it, but that others had come, and
that the greater part of our cornfields had been e