must compare our father's conduct to a fat animal that carries its tail upon its back, but when affrighted it drops it between its legs and runs off.

Listen, father! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land; neither are we sure that they have done so by water; we therefore wish to remain here and fight our enemy should they make their appearance. If they defeat us, we will then retreat with our father.

At the Battle of the Rapids, last war, the Americans certainly defeated us; and when we retreated to our father's fort in that place the gates were shut against us. We were afraid that it would now be the case, but instead of that we now see our British father preparing to march out of his garrison.

Father! You have got the arms and ammunition which our great father sent for his red children. If you have an idea of going away, give them to us, and you may go and welcome; for us, our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is His will we wish to leave our bones upon them.

VI

PUSHMATAHA TO JOHN C. CALHOUN1 (1824)

Born in 1765, died in 1824; a Chief of the Choctaws; had a notable career as a Warrior against the Osage Indians and in Mexico;

served with the Americans in the War of 1812.

FATHER, I have been here at the councilhouse for some time, but I have not talked. I have not been strong enough to talk. You shall hear me talk to-day. I belong to another district. You have, no doubt, heard of me. Pushmataha.

I am

Father, when in my own country, I often looked toward this council-house, and wanted to come here. I am in trouble. I will tell my distresses. I feel like a small child, not half as

1 Pushmataha's name is sometimes spelled Pushmatahaw, the word meaning "The warrior's seat is finished." In 1824 he went to Washington "to brighten the chain of peace," where he was treated with great attention by President Monroe and John C. Calhoun, then secretary of war, to whom he made the speech here given, a copy being now preserved in the official records of the War Department. Soon afterward he died. One of his last requests was that he might be buried with military honors. The procession that followed his body to the Congressional Cemetery was estimated to be more than a mile in length, the sidewalks, stoops and windows of houses being thronged along the way, and minute guns being fired from the hill of the capitol. John Randolph, in a eulogy pronounced in the Senate, characterized him as "one of nature's nobility; a man who would have adorned any society." On his tombstone he is described as "a warrior of great distinction; he was wise in counsel, eloquent in an extraordinary degree, and, on all occasions and under all circumstances, the white man's friend." Andrew

high as its father, who comes up to look in his father's face, hanging in the bend of his arm, to tell him his troubles. So, father, I hang in the bend of your arm, and look in your face; and now hear me speak.

Father, when I was in my own country, I heard there were men appointed to talk to us. I would not speak there; I chose to come here, and speak in this beloved house; for Pushmataha can boast and say, and tell the truth, that none of his fathers, or grandfathers, or any Choctaw,' ever drew bow against the United Jackson said he was "the greatest and the bravest Indian he had ever known." During a visit to Lafayette, who was then in Washington, Pushmataha, being accompanied by other Indians of his tribe, made the following speech:

"Nearly fifty snows have melted since you drew your sword as a companion of Washington. With him you fought the enemies of America. You mingled your blood with that of the enemy, and proved yourself a warrior. After you finished that war, you returned to your own country, and now you are come back to revisit the land where you are honored by a numerous and powerful people. You see everywhere the children of those by whose side you went to battle crowding around you and shaking your hand as the hand of a father. We have heard these things told in our distant villages, and our hearts longed to see you. We have come; we have taken you by the hand and are satisfied. This is the first time we have seen you; it will probably be the last. We have no more to say. The earth will part us for ever."

Pushmataha was taken ill just after this visit to Lafayette. On his death-bed he said to his Indian companions: "When you shall come to your home they will ask you, 'Where is Pushmataha?' and you will say to them: 'He is no more!' They will hear the tidings like the sound of the fall of a mighty oak in the stillness of the woods."

1 The Choctaws had formerly lived in southern Alabama and Mississippi, but after the Revolution they began to drift westward. In 1880 the last remnant had departed, their lands east of the Mississippi River being in that year ceded to the whites.

States. They have always been friendly. We have held the hands of the United States so long that our nails are long like birds' claws; and there is no danger of their slipping out.

Father, I have come to speak. My nation has always listened to the applications of the white people. They have given of their country till it is very small. I came here, when a young man, to see my Father Jefferson. He told me, if ever we got in trouble, we must run and tell him. I am come. This is a friendly talk; it is like that of a man who meets another, and says: "How do you do?" Another of my tribe shall talk further. He shall say what Pushmataha would say, were he stronger.

VII

BLACK HAWK TO GENERAL STREET1

(1832)

Born in 1767, died in 1838; succeeded his father as Chief of the Sac Indians in 1788; acted against the Americans in the War of 1812; because of the occupation by the whites of certain vacated lands, began the Black Hawk War in 1831; defeated in two battles in 1832; surrendered, taken East and confined in Fortress Monroe until June, 1833.

You have taken me prisoner, with all my warriors. I am much grieved; for I expected, if I did not defeat you, to hold out much longer, and give you more trouble, before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last general understood Indian fighting. I determined to rush on you, and fight you face to face. I fought hard. But your

1 Delivered in the late summer of 1832. General Street appears to have been a militia officer. Black Hawk, having been defeated in July and August by General Dodge and General Atkinson in battles on the Wisconsin and Bad Axe Rivers, made his surrender to Street at Prairie du Chien on August 27, and was placed in the immediate charge of a young lieutenant, Jefferson Davis, afterward president of the Southern Confederacy. It is curious that Robert Anderson, who commanded at Fort Sumter, and Abraham Lincoln were serving at this time against Black Hawk; and, curious again, that Black Hawk, on being taken to the East a captive, was confined in Fortress Monroe, where, thirty-three years afterward, Jefferson Davis was confined. Before going to Fortress Monroe, Black Hawk was taken to Washington and presented to Andrew Jackson in the White House, where he saluted him in words which then could not have raised the smile which they raise now: "I am a man and you are another."