On rising to leave, I invited him to a council, at my tent, which was ordered to assemble at the firing of the military. It is not unimportant to observe, that, in preparing to set out on this expedition into the Indian country, at a time when the Blackhawk had raised the standard of revolt on Rock River, and the tribes of the Upper Mississippi were believed to be extensively in his views, I had caused my canoe, after it had been finished in most perfect style of art known to this kind of vessel, to be painted with Chinese vermilion, from stem to stern. Ten years' residence among the tribes, in an official capacity, had convinced me that fear is the controlling principle of the Indian mind, and that the persuasions to a life of peace, are most effectively made under the symbols of war. To beg, to solicit, to creep and cringe to this race, whether in public or private, is a delusive, if not a fatal course; and though I was told by one or two of my neighbors that it was not well, on this occasion, to put my canoe in the symbolic garb of war, I did not think so. I carried, indeed, emphatically, messages of peace from the executive head of the Government, and had the means of insuring respect for these messages, by displaying the symbol of authority at the stern of each vessel, by an escort of soldiery, and by presents, and the services of a physician to arrest one of the most fatal of diseases which have ever afflicted the Indian race. But I carried them fearlessly and openly, with the avowed purpose of peace. The canoe, itself, was an emblem of this authority, and, like the _oriflamme_ of the Mediæval Ages, cast an auspicious influence on my mission over these bleak and wide summits, lakes, and forests, inhabited alone by fierce and predatory tribes, who acknowledged no power but force. Long before I had reached the sources of the Mississippi, St. Vrain, my fellow agent, had been most cruelly murdered at his agency, and General Scott, with the whole disposable army of the United States, had taken the field at Chicago.