Between The Logs, Wyandot, 1819

By this time we began to think that our own religion was a great deal the best, and we made another trial to establish ourselves in it, and had made some progress.  Then the war broke oist between our father, the president, and King George, and our nation was for war, and every man wanted to be big man.  Then we drink whisky and fight, and when the war was ended we were all scattered, and many killed.  The chiefs then thought that they would try to gather the nation once more, and we had got a great many together.

Then a black man, Steward, our brother here, came to us, and said he was sent by our Great Father to tell us the good way ; but we thought he was like all the rest, and wanted to cheat us, and get our money and land.  He told us of all our sins, and showed us what was ruining us, drinking whisky, and that the Great Spirit was angry with us, and that we must quit all these things.  But we treated him ill, and gave him little to eat, and trampled on him, (so now we are sure if the Great Spirit had not sent him he could not have withstood our treatment,) and were still jealous of him until we had tried him a whole year.

About this time our father (the president) counselled us to buy our land, and we had to go to the great city to see him; and when we came home, our old preacher was still with us, and he told us the same things, and we could find no alteration in him.  About this time he talked of going away to leave us, to see his friends; and our squaws told us that we were fools to let him go, for the great God had sent him, and that we ought to adopt him.  But still we wanted to wait longer.  But they told us what God had done for them by this man; so we attended his meeting in the council house, and the Great Spirit came upon us, so that some cried aloud, some clapped their hands, and some ran, and some were mad.  Now we held our meetings sometimes all night, singing and praying.

By this time we knew that God had sent our brother unto us; so we adopted him, and gave him mothers and children.  Then we went to the great camp meeting, at Lebanon, and were very happy.

Then as soon as this work was among us sit Sandusky, almost every week or two, more preachers came, and told us that they loved us, and would take us and our preacher under their care, and give us schools, and do all for us we wanted.  But we thought if they love Indians so, why not go to the Senecas and Mohawks?  We have got our preacher. Some told us, now we believed, we must be baptized all over in the water*; and now great anxiety for them: but before our brother came, care nothing about us.

Now we are many of us trying to do good, and are happy.  We have found no change in our brother Steward; but the others that come, some of them, when our young Indians will not hear and mind them, get mad and scold, so that we still think our brother is the best man, though we have many oppose us, and this night I mean to tell it all out.  Some whites that live among us, and can talk our language, say the Methodists bewitch us, and that it is all nothing but the work of the devil, and all that they want is to get you tamed, and then kill you, as they have done the Moravian Indians on the Tuscarawas river.

I told them, if we were to be killed, it was time for us to be praying.  Some white people put bad things in the minds of our wicked young Indians, and thereby make our way rough.

I was told that one of the Indians answered and said, "God made water to drink, not to drown people."