That the vast sums expended on missions should have produced so little effect, we may consider lamentable, but it is lamentably true; for in addition to the mass of evidence we have to that effect, from disinterested white men, we have also the speeches and communications of the Indians themselves.  The celebrated Seneca chief, Saguyuwhaha (keeper awake), better known in the United States by the name of Red-jacket, in a letter communicated to Governor De Witt Clinton, at a treaty held at Albany, says, “Our great father, the President, has recommended to our young men to be industrious, to plough and to sow.  This we have done; and we are thankful for the advice, and for the means he has afforded us of carrying it into effect.  We are happier in consequence of it; but another thing recommended to us, has created great confusion among us, and is making us a quarrelsome and divided people; and that is, the introduction of preachers into our nation.  These black-coats contrive to get the consent of some of the Indians to preach among us; and whenever this is the case, confusion and disorder are sure to follow, and the encroachment of the whites on our lands is the inevitable consequence.

“The governor must not think hard of me for speaking thus of the preachers:  I have observed their progress, and whenever I look back to see what has taken place of old, I perceive that whenever they came among the Indians, they were the forerunners of their dispersion; that they always excited enmities and quarrels amongst them; that they introduced the white people on their lands, by whom they were robbed and plundered of their property; and that the Indians were sure to dwindle and decrease, and be driven back, in proportion to the number of preachers that came among them.

“Each nation has its own customs and its own religion.  The Indians have theirs, given them by the Great Spirit, under which they were happy.  It was not intended that they should embrace the religion of the whites, and be destroyed by the attempt to make them think differently on that subject from their fathers.

“It is true, these preachers have got the consent of some of the chiefs to stay and preach amongst us; but I and my friends know this to be wrong, and that they ought to be removed; besides, we have been threatened by Mr. Hyde—­who came among us as a schoolmaster and a teacher of our children, but has now become a black-coat, and refuses to teach them any more—­that unless we listen to his preaching and become Christians, we shall be turned off our lands.  We wish to know from the governor, if this is to be so? and if he has no right to say so, we think he ought to be turned off our lands, and not allowed to plague us any more.  We shall never be at peace while he is among us.

“We are afraid too, that these preachers, by and by, will become poor, and force us to pay them for living among us, and disturbing us.