[Footnote A:  Mr. Gallatin.]

The Shawanoes have been known since the first discovery of this country, as a restless, wandering people, averse to the pursuits of agriculture, prone to war and the chase.  They have, within that period, successively occupied the southern shore of lake Erie, the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi, portions of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and eastern Pennsylvania; then again the plains of Ohio, and now the small remnant of them that remains, are established west of Missouri and Arkansas.  They have been involved in numerous bloody wars with other tribes; and for near half a century, resisted with a bold, ferocious spirit, and an indomitable hatred, the progress of the white settlements in Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and especially Kentucky.  The Shawanoes have declined more rapidly in numbers[A] than any other tribe of Indians known to the whites.  This has been, and we suppose justly, attributed to their wandering habits and their continual wars.  Although one of their villages is said once to have contained four thousand souls, their present number does not exceed eighteen hundred.  They have ever been considered a courageous, powerful and faithless race; who hare claimed for themselves a pre-eminence not only over other tribes, but also over the whites.[B] Their views in regard to this superiority were briefly set forth by one of their chiefs at a convention held at fort Wayne, in 1803.

[Footnote A:  John Johnston.]

[Footnote B:  General Harrison considers the Shawanoes, Delawares and Miamis, as much superior to the other tribes of the west.]

“The Master of Life,” said he, “who was himself an Indian, made the Shawanoes before any other of the human race; and they sprang from his brain:  he gave them all the knowledge he himself possessed, and placed them upon the great island, and all the other red people are descended from the Shawanoes.  After he had made the Shawanoes, he made the French and English out of his breast, the Dutch out of his feet, and the long-knives out of his hands.  All these inferior races of men he made white and placed them beyond the stinking lake.[A]

“The Shawanoes for many ages continued to be masters of the continent, using the knowledge they had received from the Great Spirit in such a manner as to be pleasing to him, and to secure their own happiness.  In a great length of time, however, they became corrupt, and the Master of Life told them that he would take away from them the knowledge which they possessed, and give it to the white people, to be restored, when by a return to good principles they would deserve it.  Many ages after that, they saw something white approaching their shores; at first they took it for a great bird, but they soon found it to be a monstrous canoe filled with the very people who had got the knowledge which belonged to the Shawanoes.  After these white people landed, they were not content with having the knowledge