It was the custom among Native Americans to not reply the same day to a public proposition, as that would seem to be treating the matter too lightly. Friends, it has been our misfortune to welcome the white man. We have been deceived. Above all, he brought the spirit water that makes one forget for a time old age, weakness, and sorrow. You must lay up food and forget the hungry.
Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.
It is through this mysterious power that we too, have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land. We have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our fathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil,and the love of possessions is a disease with them. They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.