k
Island. A good spirit had the care of it; he lived under the rock, in
a cave. He was white, and his wings were ten times bigger than swan's
wings: when the white men came there, he went away.

"We had corn and beans and pumpkins and squashes. We were the
possessors of the valley of the Mississippi, full seven hundred miles
from the Ouisconsin to the Portage des Sioux, near the mouth of the
Missouri. If another prophet had come to us in those days, and said,
'The white man will drive you from these hunting grounds, and from
this village, and Rock Island, and not let you visit the graves of
your fathers,' we should have said, 'Why should you tell us a lie?'

"It was good to go to the graves of our fathers. The mother went there
to weep over her child: the brave went there to paint the post where
lay his father. There was no place in sorrow like that where the bones
of our forefathers lay. There the Great Spirit took pity on us. In our
village, we were as happy as a buffalo on the plains; but now we are
more like the hungry and howling wolf in the prairie.

"As the whites came nearer to us, we became more unhappy. They gave
our people strong liquor, and I could not keep them from drinking it.
My eldest son and my youngest daughter died. I gave away all I had;
blackened my face for two years, lived alone with my family, to humble
myself before the Great Spirit. I had only a piece of buffalo robe to
cover me.

"White men came and took part of our lodges; and Kee-o-kuk told me I
had better go West, as he had done. I said I could not forsake my
village; the prophet told me I was right. I thought then that
Kee-o-kuk was no brave, but a coward, to give up what the Great Spirit
had given us.

"The white men grew more and more; brought whiskey among us, cheated
us out of our guns, our horses and our traps, and ploughed up our
grounds. They treated us cruelly; and, while they robbed us, said that
we robbed them. They made right look like wrong, and wrong like right.
I tried hard to get right, but could not. The white man wanted my
village, and back I must go. Sixteen thousand dollars every twelve
moons are to be given to the Pottawatomies for a little strip of land,
while one thousand dollars only was set down for our land signed away,
worth twenty times as much. White man is too great a cheat for red
man.

"A great chief, with many soldiers, came to drive us away. I went to
the prophet, who told me not to be afraid. They