of our enemies.  After the peace their communication with the Canadian authorities was preserved; and, in every year, large parties of the most influential chiefs and warriors visited Upper Canada, and returned laden with presents.  That this continued intercourse kept alive feelings of attachment to a foreign power and weakened the proper and necessary influence of the United States, is known to every one who has marked the progress of events and conduct of the Indians upon the north western frontier.  The tribes upon the upper Mississippi, particularly the Sacs and Foxes and Winnebagoes, confident in their position and in their natural courage, and totally ignorant of the vast disproportion between their power, and that of the United States, have always been discontented, keeping the frontier in alarm, and continually committing some outrage upon the persons or property of the inhabitants.  All this is the result of impulse, and is the necessary and almost inevitable consequence of institutions, which make war the great object of life.  It is not probable, that any Indian seriously bent up on hostilities, ever stops to calculate the force of the white man, and to estimate the disastrous consequences which we know must be the result.  He is impelled onward in his desperate career, by passions which are fostered and encouraged by the whole frame of society; and he is, very probably, stimulated by the predictions of some fanatical leader, who promises him glory, victory and scalps.

“In this state of feeling, and with these incitements to war, the Sacs and Foxes claimed the right of occupying a part of the country on Rock river, even after it had been sold to citizens of the United States, and settled by them.  In 1829 and in 1830, serious difficulties resulted from their efforts to establish themselves in that section, and frequent collisions were the consequence.  Representations were made to them, and every effort, short of actual hostilities, used by the proper officers, to induce them to abandon their unfounded pretensions, and to confine themselves to their own country on the west side of the Mississippi river.  These efforts were successful, with the well disposed portion of the tribes, but were wholly unavailing with the band known by the name of the “British party.”  In 1831, their aggressions were so serious, and the attitude they assumed, so formidable, that a considerable detachment of the army, and of the militia of Illinois, was called into the field; and the disaffected Indians, alarmed by the preparation for their chastisement, agreed to reside and hunt, “upon their own lands west of the Mississippi river,” and that they would not recross this river to the usual place of their residence, nor to any part of their old hunting grounds east of the Mississippi, without the express permission of the President of the United States, or the Governor of the state of Illinois.