“Our traditions tell us that our fathers fled before the powerful red men who dwell beyond the Great River, and who robbed us of our homes and made them their own, as you, the white men, have done.  Have you bought the home of our fathers from these red men? or have you taken it? that you bid us take it from you, and go back, and make a new home where the fathers of our fathers sleep in death?  If you have not, will they not hunt us away again, as you have?  How shall we know you will not come and make us sell to you, for the white man, the homes you promise shall always be ours and a home for our children’s children?

“We love the land where we were born and where we have buried our fathers and our kindred.  It is the Great Spirit which teaches us to love the land, the wigwam, the stream, the trees where we hunted and played from our childhood, where we have buried out of sight our ancestors for generations.  Who says it is mean to love the land, to keep in our hearts these graves, as we keep the Great Spirit?  It is noble to love the land, where the corn grows, and which was given to us by the Great Spirit.  We will sell no more; we know we are passing away; the leaves fall from the trees, and we fall like these; some will stay to be the last.  The snow melts from the hills, but there is some left for the last; we are left for the last, like the withered leaf and little spot of snow.  Leave to us the little we have, let us die where our fathers have died, and let us sleep where our kindred sleep; and when the last is gone, then take our lands, and with your plough tear up the mould upon our graves, and plant your corn above us.  There will be none to weep at the deed, none to tell the traditions of our people, or sing the death-song above their graves—­none to listen to the wrongs and oppressions the red man bore from his white brother, who came from the home the Great Spirit gave him, to take from the red man the home the Great Spirit gave him.  We are few and weak, you are many and strong, and you can kill us and take our homes; but the Great Spirit has given us courage to fight for our homes, if we may not live in them—­and we will do it—­and this is our talk, our last talk.”

He folded back the blanket he had thrown from his shoulders, and, followed by his band, he stalked majestically away.  They had broken up their camp and returned to their homes upon the Tallapoosa.

Unawed by the defection of the Tuscahatchees, the band attached to Hopothlayohola, McIntosh went on to complete the treaty.  This chief, because he had been the friend of the United States in the then recent war, assumed to be the principal chief of the nation, as he held the commission of a brigadier-general from the United States; a commission, however, which only gave him command with his own people.  This assumption was denied by Hopothlayohola, chief of the Tuscahatchees, Tuskega, and other chiefs of the nation, who insisted upon the ancient usages, and the power