When it was objected that it
would be troublesome to remove the seats, he replied that 'it
would only be necessary to remove those intended for the whites--
that the red men were accustomed to sit upon the earth, which was
their mother, and that they were always happy to recline upon her
bosom.'"*
* James Hall, "Memoir of William Henry Harrison," pp. 113-114.
The chieftain's equivocal conduct aroused fresh suspicion, but he
was allowed to proceed with the oration which he had come to
deliver. Freely rendered, the speech ran, in part, as follows:
"I have made myself what I am; and I would that I could make the
red people as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think
of the Great Spirit that rules over all. I would not then come to
Governor Harrison to ask him to tear the treaty [of 1809]; but I
would say to him, Brother, you have liberty to return to your own
country. Once there was no white man in all this country: then it
belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it
by the Great Spirit to keep it, to travel over it, to eat its
fruits, and fill it with the same race--once a happy race, but
now made miserable by the white people, who are never contented,
but always encroaching.
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