“Brothers, when the Great Spirit made man, he put him to live on the earth.  Our traditions do not agree in saying of what he was made.  Some say it was of clay, and that when his spirit starts for the happy hunting-grounds, his body becomes clay again.  I do not say that this is so, for I do not know.  It is not good to say that which we do not know to be true.  I wish to speak only the truth.  This we do know.  If a warrior die, and we put him in the earth, and come to look for him many years afterward, nothing but bones are found.  All else is gone.  I have heard old men say that, in time, even these bones are not to be found.  It is so with trees; it may be so with men.  But it is not so with hunting-grounds.  They were made to last forever.

“Brothers, you know why we have come together on this prairie.  It was to count the pale-faces, and to think of the way of making their number less.  Now is a good time for such a thing.  They have dug up the hatchet against each other, and when we hear of scalps taken among them, it is good for the red men.  I do not think our Canada father is more our friend than the great Yankee, Uncle Sam.  It is true, he gives us more powder, and blankets, and tomahawks, and rifles than the Yankee, but it is to get us to fight his battles.  We will fight his battles.  They are our battles, too.  For this reason we will fight his enemies.

“Brothers, it is time to think of our children.  A wise chief once told me how many winters it is since a pale-face was first seen among red men.  It was not a great while ago.  Injins are living who have seen Injins, whose own fathers saw the first pale-faces.  They were few.  They were like little children, then; but now they are grown to be men.  Medicine-men are plenty among them, and tell them how to raise children.  The Injins do not understand this.  Small-pox, fire-water, bad hunting, and frosts, keep us poor, and keep our children from growing as fast as the children of the pale-faces.  “Brothers, all this has happened within the lives of three aged chiefs.  One told to another, and he told it to a third.  Three chiefs have kept that tradition.  They have given it to me.  I have cut notches on this stick (holding up a piece of ash, neatly trimmed, as a record) for the winters they told me, and every winter since I have cut one more.  See; there are not many notches.  Some of our people say that the pale-faces are already plentier than leaves on the trees.  I do not believe this.  These notches tell us differently.  It is true the pale-faces grow fast, and have many children, and small-pox does not kill many of them, and their wars are few; but look at this stick.  Could a canoe-full of men become as many as they say, in so few winters?  No; it is not so.  The stories we have heard are not true.  A crooked tongue first told them.  We are strong enough still to drive these strangers into the great salt lake, and get back all our hunting-grounds.  This is what I wish to have done.