“_My great Father._ I will not tell a lie. I am going to tell the truth. You love your country; you love your people; you love the manner, in which they live; and you think your people brave. I am like you, my great Father:--I love my country; I love my people; I love the manner, in which they live; and think myself and warriors brave. Spare me, then, my Father. Let me enjoy my country, pursue the buffalo, and the beaver, and the other wild animals of our wilderness; and I will trade the skins with your people. I have grown up and lived thus long without work. I am in hopes you will suffer me to die without it. We have yet plenty of buffalo, beaver, deer, and other wild animals; we have also an abundance of horses. We have every thing we want. We have plenty of land--_if you will keep your people off of it_. Let me continue to live, as I have done--until I shall have passed to the Good, or Evil Spirit, from the wilderness of my present life.
“There was a time, when we did not know the whites. Our wants were fewer then, than they are now. They were always within control. We had then seen nothing, which we could not get. But since our intercourse with the _whites_, who have caused such a destruction of our game, our situation is changed. We could lie down to sleep, and when we awoke, we could 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 you, (handing it to the president) as I am accustomed to present pipes to all red skins in peace with us. It is filled with such tobacco, as we smoked before we knew the white people. I know, that the buffalo robes, leggins, (gaiters) moccasins, bears’ claws, &c. are of little value to you;--but we wish to have them deposited and preserved in some conspicuous place in 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 deposits of their fathers, and reflect on the times that are past.”
“The facts in the following anecdote of a Pawnee Brave, son of _Old Knife_, one of the delegation, who visited Washington in 1821-22, highly creditable to his courage, his generosity, and his humanity, were taken, by permission, from a very interesting manuscript Journal of Captain Bell, of his expedition with Major Long, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in 1821, and are sanctioned by Major O’Fallon, Indian agent, near the scene of the transaction here related; and also by the interpreter, who witnessed the scene.