About sixty-six years ago, we lived on a river, which runs from a lake to the Mississippi, from the east, and on the east side of that river. Our fathers and great fathers lived there for a long time, as long as they could recollect. At that time we had about four hundred men fit to go to war, but we were then small to what we had been. Our fathers say, as long as they can recollect, we have been diminishing. (This is a usual Indian complaint: in most instances an unfounded one). We owned all the land east of the Mississippi. (This usual Indian claim of very extended possessions has generally very little foundation in fact). Whatever ground we made tracks through, it was ours. Our fathers saw white men on the [great?] lakes about 120 years ago; [Nearer 200 probably]; do not know where they came from. About the same time we first got guns. We were afraid of them at first, they seemed like the “Great Spirit.” Our fathers also, at the same time, for the first received iron, axes, hoes, kettles and woollen blankets. We, the [present] old men of our nation, first saw white men between forty and fifty years ago, near the mouth of the Missouri. The same missionary gentlemen, in the same paper, make these observations, which every one who has ever engaged in Indian researches, or in inquiries of the Indians themselves, will endorse as entirely correct: In tracing their history, religion, &c., it will be exceedingly difficult to proceed with certainty and satisfaction, from the differences we find in the notions of different individuals: _e. g._ today we will sit down with an old Indian, who will enter into a plausible detail of their history, or religious belief, or some traditions of their fathers. Another of the same age and patriarchal rights will give quite a different statement about the same things; or perhaps the same individual would tomorrow give his own story quite a different shade. This is the reason why the reports of the transient observers vary so much. It requires long acquaintance, and close observation, to arrive at anything like just conclusions on these points; and it is only by collecting different and conflicting notions, and balancing them, that we can find which prevails.