"My friends,--You speak of the '_good book_' that you have in your hand; we have many of these in our village; we are told that 'all your words about the Son of the Great Spirit are printed in that book, and if we learn to read it, it will make good people of us.' I would now ask why it don't make good people of the pale faces living all around us? They can all read the good book, and they can understand all that the '_black coats_'[15] say, and still we find they are not so honest and so good a people as ours: this we are sure of; such is the case in the country about us, but _here_ we have no doubt but the white people who have so many to preach and so many books to read, are all honest and good. In _our_ country the white people have two faces, and their tongues branch in different ways; we know that this displeases the Great Spirit, and we do not wish to teach it to our children." [15] Clergymen. He here took the pipe again, and while smoking, the reverend gentleman asked him if he thought the Indians did all to serve the Great Spirit that they ought to do--all that the Great Spirit required of them? to which he replied-- "My friends,--I don't know that we do all that the Great Spirit wishes us to do; there are some Indians, I know, who do not; there are some bad Indians as well as bad white people; I think it is very difficult to tell how much the Great Spirit wishes us to do." The reverend gentleman said-- "That, my friends, is what we wish to teach you; and if you can learn to read this good book, it will explain all that." The chief continued-- "We believe the Great Spirit requires us to pray to Him, which we do, and to thank Him for everything we have that is good. We know that He requires us to speak the truth, to feed the poor, and to love our friends. We don't know of anything more that he demands; he may demand more of white people, but we don't know that." The reverend gentleman inquired-- "Do you not think that the Great Spirit sometimes punishes the Indians in this world for their sins?" _War-chief._--"Yes, we do believe so." _Rev. Gentleman._--"Did it ever occur to you, that the small pox that swept off half of your tribe, and other tribes around you, a few years ago, might have been sent into your country by the Great Spirit to punish the Indians for their wickedness and their resistance to his word?"