"My great Father,--some of your good chiefs, as they are called (missionaries), have proposed to send some of their good people among us to change our habits, to make us work for them, and live like the white people. 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 we live, and think myself and warriors brave.[22] Spare me then, my Father; let me enjoy my country, and pursue the buffalo and the beaver, and the other wild animals of our country, and I will trade their 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 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 it_. My Father has a piece on which he lives (Council bluffs), and we wish him to enjoy it--we have enough without it--but we wish him to live near us, to give us good council--to keep our ears and eyes open, that we may continue to pursue the right road--the road to happiness. He settles all differences between us and the whites, between the red-skins themselves--he makes the whites do justice to the red-skins, and he makes the red-skins do justice to the whites. He saves the effusion of human blood, and restores peace and happiness in the land. You have already sent us a father (Major O'Fallon); it is enough--he knows us, and we know him--we keep our eye constantly upon him, and since 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.