ce we have heard _your_
words, we will listen more attentively to _his_.

"It is too soon, my great Father, to send those good chiefs amongst us.
_We are not starving yet_--we wish you to permit us to enjoy the chase
until the game of our country is exhausted--until the wild animals become
extinct. Let us exhaust our present resources before you make us toil and
interrupt our happiness. Let me continue to live as I have done; and after
I have passed to the good or evil spirit, from off the wilderness of my
present life, the subsistence of my children may become so precarious as
to need and embrace the assistance of those good people.

"There was a time when we did not know the whites--our wants were then
fewer than they are now. They were always within our control--we had then
seen nothing which we could not get. Before our intercourse with the
whites (who have caused such a destruction in our game) we could lie down
to sleep, and when we awoke we would find the buffalo feeding around our
camp--but now we are killing them for their skins, and feeding the wolves
with their flesh, to make our children cry over their bones.

"Here, my great Father, is a pipe which I present to you, as I am
accustomed to present pipes to all the Red-skins in peace with us. It is
filled with such tobacco as we were accustomed to smoke before we knew
the white people. It is pleasant, and the spontaneous growth of the most
remote parts of our country. I know that the robes, leggings, and
moccasins, and bear-claws are of little value to _you_; but we wish you to
have them deposited and preserved in some conspicuous part of your lodge,
so that when we are gone and the sod turned over our bones, if our
children should visit this place, as we do now, they may see and recognize
with pleasure the depositories of their fathers; and reflect on the times
that are past."

I shall now take leave of the Indians and their political condition, by
observing that the proceedings of the American government, throughout,
towards this brave but unfortunate race, have only been exceeded in
atrocity by the past and present conduct of the East India government
towards the pusillanimous but unoffending Hindoos.

_Note_.--This chapter I wrote during my stay in Kentucky, and the
first part of it, in substance, was inserted in the "Kentucky
Intelligencer," at the request of the talented editor and
proprietor, John Mullay, Esq.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] I