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y show their medals and other ornaments, and this is too often all they have to mark them as Christians. We have read the narratives of the Catholics, which detailed the most glowing and animating views of success. I have had accounts, however, from travellers in these regions, that have been over the Stony mountains into the great missionary settlements of St. Peter and St. Paul. These travellers (and some of them were professed Catholics) unite in affirming that the converts will escape from the missions whenever it is in their power, fly into their native deserts, and resume at once their old mode of life." That the vast sums expended on missions should have produced so little effect, we may consider lamentable, but it is lamentably true; for in addition to the mass of evidence we have to that effect, from disinterested white men, we have also the speeches and communications of the Indians themselves. The celebrated Seneca chief, Saguyuwhaha (keeper awake), better known in the United States by the name of Red-jacket, in a letter communicated to Governor De Witt Clinton, at a treaty held at Albany, says, "Our great father, the President, has recommended to our young men to be industrious, to plough and to sow. This we have done; and we are thankful for the advice, and for the means he has afforded us of carrying it into effect. We are happier in consequence of it; _but another thing recommended to us, has created great confusion among us, and is making us a quarrelsome and divided people; and that is, the introduction of preachers into our nation_. These black-coats contrive to get the consent of some of the Indians to preach among us; and whenever this is the case, confusion and disorder are sure to follow, and the encroachment of the whites on our lands is the inevitable consequence. "The governor must not think hard of me for speaking thus of the preachers: I have observed their progress, and whenever I look back to see what has taken place of old, I perceive that whenever they came among the Indians, they were the forerunners of their dispersion; that they always excited enmities and quarrels amongst them; that they introduced the white people on their lands, by whom they were robbed and plundered of their property; and that the Indians were sure to dwindle and decrease, and be driven back, in proportion to the number of preachers that came among them. "Each nation has its own customs and its own religion. The
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