By order of the Convention and Government of the Seneca nation of Indians. S. W. McLane, President. William Jemerson, Clerk. Cattaraugus Reservation, Erie County, N. Y., December 5th, 1848. To HAI-WA-NOH, (Philip E. Thomas,) Ambassador, &c., &c., Baltimore, Maryland. NO. IV. The following extracts from the proceedings of the yearly meetings of the Friends of Baltimore, in the year 1850, will give some idea of the present condition of the women, and the understanding they have of governmental as well as domestic affairs: “Thus we see the Seneca nation with a government ‘calculated,’ to use their own language, ‘to answer the purpose for which all governments should be created.’ We find their women mostly withdrawn from the field, and occupying their proper station in their families,—their children suitably cared for at home, and at school, having the benefit of literary and scientific learning. We have, for several years past, had among them an Institution for the instruction of their daughters in the duties of housewifery, and other appropriate domestic employments. They are provided with good dwelling-houses and barns—are the undisputed owners of a fertile, productive soil, of ample extent for all their purposes, yielding more than the nation can consume; and in addition to these advantages, they are in receipt of annuities more than sufficient to defray all the expenses of their government. “When the present joint committees first visited the Reservations, in the years 1839 and 1840, a very large portion of the Indians lived in wigwams, or poor log huts—covered with bark, boards, or other materials, hardly sufficient to shield them from the weather. Many of them had earth floors, on which they slept in buffalo skins and blankets. They set no table, had no regular meals—used no plates, nor knives and forks. An iron pot was generally found placed over the fire, into which they put beans and hominy, and a piece of some sort of meat—either pork or venison. When any one of the family was hungry, he helped himself to what he wanted, putting it in a small wooden vessel, and feeding himself with a wooden or iron spoon. The interior of the dwellings generally presented to the eye a spectacle by no means calculated to warm the imagination in favor of Indian life. The truth is, that woman had been driven from her proper sphere, and no domestic happiness could enter the dwelling in her absence.