The plan designed to be pursued, and the only one that can succeed, is to send runners to the different bands, explaining the friendly intentions of our Government, and to invite them to a meeting. For this purpose several Camanchee and Pawnee prisoners have been purchased from the Osages, who may be of great service in bringing about a friendly interview. I ardently hope that this plan may succeed, for I am anticipating great fatigue and privation in the endeavour to see these wild tribes together; that I may be enabled to lay before the world a just estimate of their manners and customs. I hope that my suggestions may not be truly prophetic; but I am constrained to say, that I doubt very much whether we shall see anything more of them than their trails, and the sites of their deserted villages. Several companies have already started from this place; and the remaining ones will be on their march in a day or two. General Leavenworth will accompany them 200 miles, to the mouth of False Washita, and I shall be attached to his staff. Incidents which may occur, I shall record. Adieu. +Note.+—In the mean time, as it may be long before I can write again, I send you some account of the Osages; whom I have been visiting and painting during the two months I have been staying here. [4] Several years after writing the above, I was shocked at the announcement of the death of this amiable and honourable young man, Lieutenant Seaton, who fell a victim to the deadly disease of that country; severing another of the many fibres of my heart, which peculiar circumstances in these wild regions, had woven, but to be broken. LETTER—No. 38. FORT GIBSON, _ARKANSAS_. Nearly two months have elapsed since I arrived at this post, on my way up the river from the Mississippi, to join the regiment of dragoons on their campaign into the country of the Camanchees and Pawnee Picts; during which time, I have been industriously at work with my brush and my pen, recording the looks and the deeds of the Osages, who inhabit the country on the North and the West of this. The Osage, or (as they call themselves) _Wa-saw-see_, are a tribe of about 5200 in numbers, inhabiting and hunting over the head-waters of the Arkansas, and Neosho or Grand Rivers. Their present residence is about 700 miles West of the Mississippi river: in three villages, constituted of wigwams, built of barks and flags or reeds. One of these villages is within forty miles of this Fort; another within sixty, and the third about eighty miles. Their chief place of trade is with the sutlers at this post; and there are constantly more or less of them encamped about the garrison.