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No. 40 Vol. 111.
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INDIAN CONFERENCE WITH THE
PRESIDENT.
To the Editors of the National Intelligencer.
Gentlemen : Several persons having expres
sed an earnest wish to see some account of the
late conference of the Indians with tile President,
the inclosed letter, intended for a distant friend,
is at your service. I regret that I have not leis
ure to make it more worthy of (he publick eye.
A SUBSCRIBER.
Washington, Feu. G, 1822.
J\ly dear Friend: —Happening to make a
morning visit to the President two or
three days ago, 1 learnt that the Indian s ,
now in Washington, would be there in a
few minutes, for the purpose of having a
talk with their Great Father, and l was
tempted to wait and witness a spectacle to
tne so novel and interesting. They accor
dingly soon arrived, and were shewn into
the anti-chamber to the right of the draw
ing room. When I entered, I found the
thirteen, thut is twelve men and one
woman, seated round the room, and Major
O’Fallon, the officer who has charge of
them, with .four or five other gentlemen,
standing at the fire place. They were all
dressed in blue cloth surtputs, with red cuffs
fd cape?, blue pantaloons and boots—in
ort, in complete American costume, ex
pt that they wore on their heads a sort
of coronet bedizened with red and blue
foil, and stuck all round with feathers of
the gayest colours. Their faces, too,
were painted, though in a less fantastick
style than usual. The squaw sat on a sofa
near her husband, dressed in scarlet panta
loons, and wrapped in a green camblct
cloak, without any ornament on her long
Mr'k hair. They consisted, as 1 was told,
of the Pawnees, Kansas, Ottoes, Mahas,
and Misspuries. The five chiefs were dis
tinguished by two silver epaulettes, and the
two half chiefs by one. They were evi
dently not easy in their new habiliments—
their coats seemed to pinch them about the
-shoulders; smd now ahd then they would
‘lake off their uneasy head dresses, and one
sought a temporary relief by pulling off his
.boots.
Upon Major OTallon suggesting that
they left the presents they intended for the
President, the young men were immediate
ly despatched by their chiefs, and the squaw
by her husband, for their intended tokens
of friendship and good will. They return
ed in a few’ minutes with Buffalo skins,
pipe?, mocasins, and feather head dresses.
The President entered, with the Secretary
of War, and taking his seat, delivered to
them, through the interpreters an extem
pore address, from notes held in his band
—and, as they used two distinct languages,
it was necessary that every sentence should
be twice interpreted. The President told
them he was glad to see them—that, when
he had met them before, he was too much
engaged in receiving his great council to
sh<*v them the atteution he wished—and
THE MIS STONER!.
that now he had more leisure, and he was
as pleased to see them in the dress of their
white brethren as he had been before in
that of their own country. He adverted
to the visit they had made to our large
towns—to our arsenals, navy yards, and
the like, and told them that as much as
they had seen, it could give them but a
faint idea of our numbers and strength as
the deer and the buffalo they might chance
to meet in passing through their forest,
bore a small proportion to those they did
not see. That they had met with few of
our warriours, because they were not want
ed at the seat of government, and because
we were at peace with all the world—but
if we were in a state of war, all our citizens
would take arms into their hands and be
come brave Warriours. He enjoined them
to preserve peace with one another, and to
listen to no voioc wiiicii shouiirpersuaire
them to distrust the friendship of the Uni
ted States. They were told that they
should receive some presents, and be con
ducted safely back to their wives and chil
dren by Major O’Fallon, whose advice they
were told to consider as the advice of their
great father, the President.
This address was interpreted sentence by
sentence, and and at the end of each, first
those who spoke one language, and then
those who spoke the other, gave invariably
a sign of assent, which was a sort of inar
ticulate sound or grunt. Before the Presi
dent had finished, the Judges of the Su
preme Court, and some others, happening
to call on the President, increased the
number of attentive auditors.
When the President had finished, Major
O’Fallon then told them their great father
was ready to hear what they had to say,
and he encouraged them to speak with the
same freedom that they would use in their
own village. The principal Pawnee Chief
the* stepped forward, and, having shaken
hands with the President, the Secretary of
War, and Maj. O’Fallon, he delivered his
oration, pausing, however, after every two
or three sentences, until the interpreter
could do his office.’ He appeared to be
about 45 years of age, was 6 feet high ;
had a fine face and person, a dignified grav
ity, and gestures, which, though violent
and excessive, were never ungraceful, and
always appropriate. He was followed by
the four other chiefs, each of whom ex
hibited a style of oratory of his own, though
they all ‘used the same vehement and sig
nificant gesticulation. Short speeches be
ing then made by their followers, they
brought their presents, and laying them at
the feet of the President, made some per
tinent remarks on each, explaining its his
tory or use.
In these numerous speeches I regret that
I had not thought of taking notes, or even
of impressing on my mind what was said by
each. As it i, 1 can only recal some of
their most striking remarks, without al
ways remembering by which speaker they
were made.
The first speaker said, that he had
heard the words of the Great Father, and
they bad gone in at one ear, hut would not
go out at the other; that they had seen
our chiefs, our towns, our buildings, and
were much pleased with all that they had
seen. They found the U. States populous
and powerful, while they were weak and
few ; that the Great Spirit had made some
men white and others red ; the white men
could make fine houses, and guns and fur
niture. The red men could make nothing.
The white man lived upon the animals he
raised at home ; the red man hunted the
buffalo,whose skin he wore and whose flesh
he ate. Yet the Great Spirit intended there
should be white and red men, and protect
ed them both. He said that some white
men had offered to send preachers among
them, to teach them their way of worship
ping the Great Spirit, and of cultivating the
ground. He said there were a good many
buffaloes in his country, which his nation
wished to be pernnittoJ i„ hunt awhile long
er, and after he was dead, and the buffalo
extinguished, his nation might plant corn
and raise animals like the whites. He gave
thanks for their new clothes, professed
friendship for the whites, and hoped soon
to return to his own country.
The next orator, in a different language,
began by shewing his hands, and stating
that they were clean—unstained with
blood; that he had from a boy been a friend
to the whites, and had been, on that ac
count, an object of suspicion among his own
tribe. He said he had seen our towns and
our churches, and that we worshipped the
Great Spirit one way, and they worshipped
him another. He, like the first speaker,
deprecated the habits ofeivilization so long
as the buffalo were abundant in their coun
try.
One Speaker began by saying that he
had been very wicked in his life ; he had
been like a mad dog ; he had killed men
belonging to all three tribes, pointing to
the rest; but since he had known his fa
ther, (Maj. O’F.) he at peace.—
For the last three years he had been as if
his arms were broke, he had not struck a
blow.’
Ad ardent attachment to their country as
well as their habits of life was frequently
manifested. They said to their great fa
ther, you haye a fine country, great towns,
GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD AND PREACH THE GOSPIL TO EVERY CREATURK. Jrsus Ctucxtr.
MOUNT ZION, (HANCOCK CO. GA.) MONDAY, MARCH li, 1822.
large houses to live in, fine clothes to wear,
but we love our country as much as you
love yours. You love to work —we don’t
want to work as long as we can kill buffalo
and steal horses.* Our villages are small ;
we won’t lie and say they are as largt as
yours—but our men are as brave. Such
as you see us, such are the men we have
left behind us.
Two of them spoke with great humility
of the red people compared with (he
whites, whom they distinctly admitted that
the great spirit had made their superiors.
They all expressed the pleasure they de
rived from their new clothes, and one said
he felt in his new dress like an animal that
had shed his old hair, and came out sleek
in the spring.
Though they in general have acomnos
edo ess and ‘elf-inaacMMu-** nicb is unknown
To civilized man, it was clear that the first
speaker was not quite at his ease. Each
succeeding orator, however, seemed to
feel less of embarrassment or rather re
serve, until the fourth was as liud as you
ever heard a lawyer at a county court bar.
After the chiefs and half chiefe had spok
en, each of their followers aso made a
short speech. One of these, ja young man
about 25 years of age, upwards of six feet
high, with a remarkably Ijandsome face,
shewed a hesitation at first tiat produced a
general smile/rom the mor* experienced
orators. He was fluent eno igh, however,
after he had begun. He that his fa
ther had died when be was 1 very young,
and that he had grown up like the grass
which again shoots forth after it seems to
have been killed by the frost- He was not
yet a great man-—he was a mere boy —he
was not equal to his chief, but he endeav
oured to keep close behind him (putting
one fore finger behind the other.) He
hoped one day to be a leader in his tribe.
This youth had been mentioned by his
chief in warm terms of commendation and
friendship, and an epaulette indirectly soli
cited for him.
When our lordly sex bad finished their
speeches, which they seemed as fond of
making as are the members of some other
great councils, the squaw, a comely young
woman of eighteen, urged by some of them,
apparently in sport, approached the Presi
dent, and hanging her head on one side,
with a pleasing smile and yet more pleasing
timidity, said that her Great Father had
given the red men new clothes like white
men,.and they looked very well in them ;
that those who had no silver medals would
look still better ifthey had them, and that
she too would like to be dressed as a white
woman if her great Father would give her
anew dress. I suspected the first part of
her speech was suggested by others, and
the last was as natural as her blushes and
smiles. You see that the love of finery is
not created by civilization; it merely be
comes more chaste and discriminating.
Before the presents were delivered, the
chief of the Great Pawnees decorated him
self in a singular head dress of turkey feath
ers, so stuck ia the edge of a long slip of
wampum as to form a crown round his
brows, and a large oval down his back,
which it lmost completely covered. An
elderly chief of the Missouri tribe, who
proved to be the husband of the squaw, fol
lowed his example, and substituted his na
tive head dress for that which had been giv
en him. This consisted of a profusion of
horse hair, stained, of a bright scarlet, and
surmounted (risum teneatis ?) with two
polished taper horns, as long as those of an
ox. There was, however, I assure you,
nothing in the looks or demeanour of his
spouse to justify the wicked ideas which
this ill-omened ornament suggested.
After the conference was at an end, they
partook of wine, cake, and other refres
ments, of which they were no wise sparing ;
and then lighting their pipes, filled with
wild tobacco, they,smoked awhile, and pre
sented their several pipes to the President,
Chief and others, to take a whiff,
in token or peace ana amity.
It is impossible to see these people, and
believe, as I do, that they are destined, in
no very long lapse of time, to disappear
from the facemf the earth, without feeling
for them great interest. With some vices,
and much grossness, they possess many fine
traits of character; and we never can for
get that they were the native lords of that
soil which they are gradually yielding to
their invaders. Yes, 1 firmly belieye that
all our liberal and humane attempts to
civilize them wiy prove hopeless and una
vailing. Whether it is that they acquire
our bad habits before our good ones, or
that their course of life has, by itslongcon-,
tinuance, so modified the nature of the race
that it cannot thrive under the restraints of
civilization,. I know not; but it is certain
* Query.—Did the great Mr. Wright of Mary
land derive his ideas of Indian morality from these
harrangues of his aboriginal brethren of u ,the
chase ?” “ The late of God,” says He, “is in
scribed upon their hearts,” and consequently,
any attempt to civilize them would tend to “ un
hinge their principles,” and make them rebels to
their Creator, whose mandate has fixed thteir linb
its and mode of life, and taught .them, according
to the reasoning of this profound and logical rep
resentative of a Christian people, to murder their
prisoners and “ steal horses.”
that all the tribes which have remained
among us have gradually dwindled to in
significance or become entirely extinct.
You know that every experiment to rear
the young wild dock has failed: and that
they die as certainly by your kindness as
your neglect. It may beg with them.
Considering the race to be thus transient,
I have often wished that more pains were
bestowed, and by more competent persons,
in recording what is most remarkable and
peculiar among them, now that those pecu
liarities are fresh & unchanged by their con
nexion with us. Aud iam sorry that 1 have
not been able to give you a more faithful
picture of a scene which, I believe, above
all others, is calculated to shew them to
the best advantage. lam sure I have
gimuuf,. fu;-* i-i. the very lively
gratification it afforded.
I am truly, your friend, &c.
[The sentiments expressed in the concluding
paragraph pf this piece, we cannot suffer to oc
cupy a place in our paper without a few remarks.
We know it is a prevailing opinion, published in
almost every newspaper, and expressed in almost
every circle, and thundered from the lips of ma
ny an empty declaimer in Congress, that the
minds and manners of the Indians are not suscep
tible of cultivation. The expression, “ I firmly
believe that all our liberal and humane attempts
to civilize them will prove hopeless and unavail
ing,” used by this writer, is substantially adopted
by thousands in our country. But upon what da
ta is this deep and thorough conviction founded ?
Not surely upon the history of other nations; —
for all were once in a state of equally “ hopeless”
barbarism, and fram this condition they hare
emerged by gradual and progressive steps. Nei
ther do we think, that this conclusion is author
ized by the hisfory of these savages. Few ra
tional experiments have as yet been made for
their civilization, add these few have by no means
proved abortive. Many of these children of the
forest have had no other intercourse with the
whites, than that which is calculated to increase
their debasement. Those tribes which have re
ceived regular and Christian instructions, give us
ample evidence of their talents and aptness to
learn.
The friends of Schools and Missions among the
natives of the wilderness, will never be discour
aged by the theories of political writers and
Congressional declairoers, while they keep their
ryr t stondily fiver! upon the happy changes wl/lcn
have been effected “among me nnd
upon the promises of Divine assistance in their
labours of lqve.]
LETTER FROM MR. FISK.
From the Middlebury, ( Vermont ) Standard.
Extract of a letter from Rev. Mr. Fisk, one of the
American Missionaries to Jerusalem, to a gen
tleman in this village, dated
Smyrna, Sept. IG, 1821.
I sometimes find it useful to institute id
my mind a comparison between the institu
tions and people of this country and of
America. 1 can scarcely fancy myself in
the same world or among the same race of
beings. Think of a government in which
every office is sold to the highest bidder,
and in which a- criminal may almost uni
formly obtain his freedom by the payment
of money. Think of schools, in most of
which the only thing taught is to pronounce
the words of a language which neither pu
pils nor teachers understand Think of
places of publick worship, in which nearly
all >he exercises *re performed in an un-
known tongue. Think of one half the fe-’
males in the country prohibited from going
out without concealing their faces, while
both the laws and the religions of the coun
try allow polygamy and concubinage.
Think of a country, in which scarce one
woman in an hundred can read, and where
perhaps not half the men are more fortu
nate. Think of a country, in which a gov
crnour has liberty to behead seven men a
day without assigning any teason whatever
for so doing, where a criminal is condemn
eiwwiuiuut jury, jiuu i hart almost said Wlin
out trial or witnesses, and after being con
demned, is immediately beheaded, strang
led or hung at the first convenient place in
the street, and left hanging two or three
days. Think of a country in which, in
case of publick disturbance, one half the
community can murder whomsoever they
please of the other half with impunity.
Think of a country, in which an armed
man will meet a respectable inoffensive
citizen in the street of a populous city at
mid day, and shoot him dead on the spot,
and then sit down quietly and smoke his
pipe in sight of the corpse, while even the
guards of the city are passing by. Think
of a country, in which the name of Christi
anity exists hut only as a name for that
superstition and idolatry, which belong to
Paganism; and in which the delusions of
the falee Prophet exist will all their impu
rities and all their abominations. Such a
country, or rather much worse than even
this description, is Turkey. How differ
erent from that country in which it is yntir
happiness to live, and in which it was my
happiness to commence my existence!
Americans are generally proud of those
privileges, which distinguish them from
other nations. Would to God they were
all equally zealous to improve as they
ought j those privileges, i tbmk a short
- : —r-~--
Price , j|3,sopr. ann. or,
f $3,00 in advance, j
residence in this country would prepare an
American to appreciate more justly the
privileges enjoyed in his native land. It
seems to me as though if I were permitted
to live in America again, every privilege
would be doublj valuable.
Just before closing this letter,-1 heard a
pistdl fired at the door of (be house in which
I live. On inquiry, I learned that a Turfc
had shot a Greek. I went to the window,
and saw the blood on the stones about 5
feet from the door, at which I Had entered
5 to 10 minutes before. The Wreek ex
pired soon after. Such events happen al
most daily since the revolt of the Greeks,
in other parts of the Empire, and scarcely
any notice is taken of them by authorities
of the town.
SANDWICH ISLAND MISSION.
The following late and interesting particulars iff
this Mjssion were communicated by Mr. Thurs
ton, one of the American Missionaries to these
remote islands. Let it not be forgotten, that
a short time since, .the people who are here
spoken of as being the subjects of Christian
and literary instruction, were the worshippers
of wooden'deities that these idols have been
voluntarily renounced, and are no placed in
the museums of England and America, as oh*
Jects of publick curiosity,
. “ W Mrs TANARUS, I take* my pen.
From Kirooah we by Mowce, and
there spent a month in comfortable circum
stances ; after which we arrived here, and
were received rnlo the bosom of the fami
ly at Woahoo. After the perils I had ex
perienced, I cannot describe to you my
emotions, in reaching this establishment.
It seemed like getting home to a fathers
house. Here now, on an extensive plan,
m a grass-thatched cottage, with half a do
zen pupils, having the daily Society of
Christian community, my time passes al
most imperceptibly away. Eleven chil-
dren and adults are members of ihe family,
and about thirty of the school. Seven,
long since, could read the scriptures intel
ligibiy; several have committed to memo
vy for children ; and sev
eral have practised the art of writing with
much suefcess. The King is becoming
more temperate. Several of bis last inter
views with the famlty L a y e gives vnuth
encouragement. Last week he made his
yeariy splendid entertainment in honour of
his nnliciV momnrj,. ‘l’wo tables were
spread in the midst of many thousand na
tives, where himself, the mission familj',
captains, officers, and residents, were seat
ed. At his request a minister was situated
at each table, and God acknowledged as
giver of those good things, which were
spread before them.
“ We are now building the house sent
out from America. When that is complet
ed, be says he intends to taboo* dancing on
the Sabbath, and to attend meeting. He
wishes to have a house sent out to Aim, by
the good people of America, three stories
high s—one5 —one story for the worship of Jeho
vah, as by and by he intends to pray. He
wishes to have us get all (he sounds, and
print books and prayers in the Oivhyhean
language. He called (We other day, and
wished to know how the abovementioned
lathes Okahoo-hov , and John E-cJ had pro
ceeded in their spelling-books and Testa
ments. When he Was iuforriied, and had
looked at -their writing, he three limes
mentioned how very sorry he ivas, (hat ho
had left off learning He felt vexed with
himself for so doing;—was ashamed to be
gin a second (imp ; and many people told
him, by way of discouragement, they should
think he would be. There is a prospect
that his little brother will become a mem
ber of the family, and be educated in tl.
“ At Atooi prospects of usefulness are
very flattering. Tamoree calls the breth
ren and sisters stationed there his children{
and supplies their wants with all the indul
gence of a fond father. Himself and his
wire nave commenced inking their meal*
at the table of the brethren, art? trepy de
sirous to learn to read, and become ac
quainted with; the contents of the Bible.
The king ba'placed thirty children under
their instruction, to be educated as children
are in America.”
* That is, forbid dancing on the Sabbath.,
t Boys mentioned in the preceding parts of the
letter, as being most advanced in learning.
Charleston , S. C. Feb. 16.
HIARfNERS’CHURCH.
On ijabbath last, the Mariners’ church of
thi9 city was first opened for the s< rvice of
our heavenly Father. An eloquent and ap
propriate sermon was preached by lb®
Rev. Dr. Palmer, from Psalm J 42, 4th
verse—“ No man cared for my soul.”
The first part of the discourse went to shew
liow this useful clasS of our fellow citizens
had been neglected in their moral and re
ligious improvement: that neither the
publick servants of God, nor private Chris
tians, appeared to care for the souls of sail
ors. The second part pointed out the ev
idences, that there was a change of senti
ment goine on, both in this city and other
parts of the world—that people begin to>
care for the souls of sailors—Marine
Bible Societies l , Port Societies, ant} tjig.