We shall have schools for our children. Each tribe shall
have its council, and all shall unite in great council. They will be
wise through learning as the white man is, and we shall become a great
State, and send our chiefs to Congress as the white man does. We shall
all read, and thus talk, as the white man does, with the mighty dead
who live in books; and write and make books that our children's
children shall read and talk with, and learn the counsels of their
great fathers in the spirit-land. This it is which makes the white man
increase and spread over the land. In our new home he promises to
protect us--to send us schools and books, and teach our children to
know them; and he will send us ploughs, and men to make them, and to
teach our young men how to make them.
"The plough will make us corn for bread, for the strength of the body;
the books will be food for the head, to make us wise and strong in
council. Let us sell and go away, and if we suffer for a time, it will
be better for our children. You see it so with the white man; shall we
not learn from him, and be like him?"
When he had concluded his talk, it was greeted in their own peculiar
manner by his followers as good.
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