Keokuk, 1837

My father: I have heard the few remarks yon have made to your children.  You have heard the words of those sitting around you, and you now know the way in which the hearts of the Sioux are placed.

You will now hear how my heart, and the hearts of my chiefs and braves, standing around me, are placed.

I should like to know who can make these people, who have brought that bunch of sticks, speak so as to be believed.  If I were to count up every thing that has taken place, on their purl, it would take several days to cut sticks.

You see me, probably, for the first time. I once thought I could, myself alone, make a treaty of peace with these people.

Since the first time that I have met my white brethren in council, I have been told the red skins must shake hands.  This has always been the word.

After I returned home from the treaty of Prairie du Chien, I visited these people in their lodges, and smoked their pipe; within two days they killed one of my principal braves.

They say they have a good heart.

I have a good heart.

I gave them a blue flag, one they professed to estimate highly.  The same fall they killed one of my chief men.

My heart is good; these people do not tell the truth when they say their hearts are good.

The summer before last yea wished to send one of your officers into the Sioux country.  I sent two of my young chiefs, who are here, with him and your troops, as we thought it was to make peace.  They brought back this pipe (holding up one;) Do you know it?  We received it as a pipe of peace from the Sioux.  Yet the same fall they killed my people on our land.

I do not think they are good men; for while my chiefs went with your troops, they killed my people on our own hunting grounds.

These people say we are deaf to your advice, and advise you to bore our ears with sticks.  I think their ears are so closed against the hearing of all good, that it will be necessary to bore them with iron.

They say they are good, when they will not listen to you; nor can you make them.

I have told you that it would be useless to count up all their aggressions; that it would take several days to cut sticks.  They boast of having kept quiet because you told them not to strike.  Since the treaty was made they have come upon our lands and killed our men.  We did not revenge ourselves, because we had given a pledge not to go on to their land.

Our difficulty with these people commenced with the drawing of the line (treaty of 1825.)  Before that, we kept the Sioux beyond St. Peters river.  We freely hunted on the great prairie and nothing of them.  Now they cross the line, and kill us in our own country.

If, among the whites, a net purchased a piece of land, another came upon it, you would drive him od Let the Sioux keep from our lands, and there will be peace.

I paw address that old man, (pointing to a Sioux who had spoken.)  I think he does not know what his young men are now doing at home as well as he thinks he does.  I will not say any thing I In not know to be true.  I make no promises.  If he knows his young men are, at this moment, quiet at home, he knows more than I do about mine, and must have greater powers of knowledge than I have.  I have no more to say at present.  The Great Spirit has heard me, and he knows I have spoken the truth.  If it be not true, it is the first time that I ever told a falsehood.