"Brother!--At the treaties held for the purchase of our lands, the white men, with sweet voices and smiling faces, told us they loved us, and that they would not cheat us, but that the king's children on the other side of the lake would cheat us. When we go on the other side of the lake, the king's children tell us your people will cheat us. These things puzzle our heads, and we believe that the Indians must take care of themselves, and not trust either in your people, or in the king's children. "Brother!--At a late council we requested our agents to tell you that we would not sell our lands, and we think you have not spoken to our agents, or they would have told you so, and we should not have met you at our council-fire at this time. "Brother!--The white people buy and sell false rights to our lands, and your employers have, you say, paid a great price for their rights. They must have a plenty of money, to spend it in buying false rights to lands belonging to Indians. The loss of it will not hurt them, but our lands are of great value to us, and we wish you to go back with our talk to your employers, and tell them and the Yorkers that they have no right to buy and sell false rights to our lands. "Brother!--We hope you clearly understand the Ideas we have offered. This is all we have to say." It is not surprising that Red-Jacket should misunderstand, or not understand at all, the right to buy Indian land, which Richardson said his employers had obtained of the "Council of Yorkers." It was the right of preemption, in plain English--by which better read jurists than the Seneca have been perplexed. He naturally enough mistook _the_ "right" of the State for _a_ right, whereas it amounted to nothing but the privilege of preventing all other parties from acquiring a right. It was a prerogative--as against the _whites_ alone--the legal effect of which was to incapacitate, not the Indians from selling, but themselves from buying. There certainly can be no mistaking the shrewd independent reflection and plausible reasoning in the address, however much the perversion of such ability and spirit may give occasion for regret. Several of the arguments, too, are clearly founded in reason, as several of the statements are fortified by truth. In regard to the Indians being cheated by the whites, particularly, the only error of Red-Jacket, and that a perfectly obvious one, was in ascribing to the whites at large, and consequently to Christianity, the credit which in fact belonged to a few unprincipled traders and greedy speculators in land, who had indeed carried their manoeuvres to an aggravated extent.