uired us to evacuate it after it had been sold. This was the land
that we wished to inhabit and thought we had a right to occupy.

I heard that there was a great chief on the Wabash, and sent a party to
get his advice. They informed him that we had not sold our village. He
assured them then, that if we had not sold the land on which our village
stood, our Great Father would not take it from us.

I started early to Malden to see the chief of my British Father, and
told him my story. He gave the same reply that the chief on the Wabash
had given, and in justice to him I must say he never gave me any bad
advice, but advised me to apply to our American Father, who, he said,
would do us justice. I next called on the great chief at Detroit and
made the same statement to him that I had made to the chief of our
British Father. He gave me the same reply. He said if we had not sold
our lands, and would remain peaceably on them, that we would not be
disturbed. This assured me that I was right, and determined me to hold
out as I had promised my people. I returned from Malden late in the
fall. My people were gone to their hunting ground, whither I followed.
Here I learned that they had been badly treated all summer by the
whites, and that a treaty had been held at Prairie du Chien. Keokuk
and some of our people attended it, and found that our Great Father had
exchanged a small strip of the land that had been ceded by Quashquame
and his party, with the Pottowattomies for a portion of their lead near
Chicago. That the object of this treaty was to get it back again, and
that the United States had agreed to give them sixteen thousand dollars
a year, forever for this small strip of land, it being less than a
twentieth part of that taken from our nation for one thousand dollars a
year. This bears evidence of something I cannot explain. This land they
say belonged to the United States. What reason then, could have induced
them to exchange it with the Pottowattomies if it was so valuable?
Why not keep it? Or if they found they had made a bad bargain with the
Pottowattomies, why not take back their land at a fair proportion of
what they gave our nation for it! If this small portion of the land
that they took from us for one thousand dollars a year, be worth sixteen
thousand dollars a year forever to the Pottowattomies, then the whole
tract of country taken from us ought to be worth, to our nation, twenty
times as much a this small fraction.