Feed

You then told us that we were in your hand, and that by closing it you could crush us to nothing, and you demanded from us a a great country as the price of that peace you had offered us — as if our want of strength had destroyed our rights. Our chiefs had felt your power, and were unable to contend against you, and they therefore gave up that country. There were but few chiefs present, and they were compelled to give it up; and it is not the Six Nations only that reproach us for having given up that country.

"For more than seventy years, I have hunted in this grove and fished in this stream, and for as many years I have worshiped on this ground. Through these groves, and over these prairies in pursuit of game, our fathers have roamed, and by them this land was left unto us an heritage forever. No one is more attached to their home than myself, and no one among you is so grieved to leave it. But the time is near at hand, when the red men of the forest will have to leave the land of their nativity, and find a home towards the setting sun.

At a council of the chiefs, head men, and warriors of the Creek nation, convened by authority, the talk of the president was communicated by the agent. After a profound silence of many minutes duration, Speckled Snake, a warrior whose head was whitened with the frosts of more than a hundred winters!  And who supported himself on the shoulders of two young men, it is supposed, arose, and spoke as follows:

Brothers! We have heard the talk of our great father, it is very kind, he says he loves his red children.

"Brother, the Governor of Maryland, when you spoke of the condition of the country yesterday, you went back to old times, and told us you had been in possession of the province of Maryland above one hundred years.  But what is one hundred years in comparison to the length of time since our claim began?  Since we came up out of this ground?  For we must tell you that, long before one hundred years, our ancestors came out of this ground, and their children have remained here ever since.

"The strong liquor was first sold to us by the Dutch; and they were were blind, they had no eyes, they did not see that it was for our hurt.  The next people that came among us were the Swedes, who continued the sale of those strong liquors to us.  They were also blind, they had no eyes, they did not see it to be hurtfull to us to drink it, although we know it to be hurtful to us, but if people will sell it to us, we are so in love with it that we cannot forbear it.