3.  We are aiming, as is pretended, at an establishment on the Mississippi, at the Ecores Amargas.  Considering the measures of this nature with which Spain is going on, having, since the proposition to treat with us on the subject, established posts at the Walnut Hills and other places for two hundred miles upwards, it would not have been wonderful if we had taken countervailing measures.  But the truth is, we have not done it.  We wished to give a fair chance to the negotiation going on, and thought it but common candor to leave things in statu quo, to make no innovation pending the negotiation.  In this spirit we forbid, and deterred even by military force, a large association of our citizens, under the name of the Yazoo companies, which had formed to settle themselves at those very Walnut Hills, which Spain has since occupied.  And so far are we from meditating the particular establishment so boldly charged in this letter, that we know not what place is meant by the Ecores Amargas.  This charge then is false also.

4.  Giving medals and marks of distinction to the Indian Chiefs.  This is but blindly hinted at in this letter, but was more pointedly complained of in the former.  This has been an ancient custom from time immemorial.  The medals are considered as complimentary things, as marks of friendship to those who come to see us, or who do us good offices, conciliatory of their good-will towards us, and not designed to produce a contrary disposition towards others.  They confer no power, and seem to have taken their origin in the European practice of giving medals or other marks of friendship to the negotiators of treaties and other diplomatic characters, or visitors of distinction.  The British government, while it prevailed here, practised the giving medals, gorgets, and bracelets to the savages, invariably.  We have continued it, and we did imagine, without pretending to know, that Spain also did it.

5.  We meddle with the affairs of Indians in alliance with Spain.  We are perfectly at a loss to know what this means.  The Indians on our frontier have treaties both with Spain and us.  We have endeavored to cultivate their friendship, to merit it by presents, charities, and exhortations to peace with their neighbors, and particularly with the subjects of Spain.  We have carried on some little commerce with them, merely to supply their wants.  Spain too has made them presents, traded with them, kept agents among them, though their country is within the limits established as ours at the general peace.  However, Spain has chosen to have it understood that she has some claim to some parts of that country, and that it must be one of the subjects of our present negotiations.  Out of respect for her, then, we have considered her pretensions to the country, though it was impossible to believe them serious, as coloring pretensions to a concern with those Indians on the same ground with our own, and we were willing to let them go on till a treaty should set things to rights between us.