siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
people of strength, of unparalleled courage and untiring, patient industry. Your
goodness of heart has caused you to work and hunt, far beyond the needs of
your families, to gain a surplus, to feed a lazy, gluttonous set of hangers on,
whose aim it is to misdirect you, whose counsels are all false, and whose great-
est desire is confusion and discord amongst this peaceful, happy people. I
know the meaning of my words. I speak them boldly and intentionally, I do
not catch you in a corner, one at a time, and secretly communicate to you
messages from the spirit land; packing you with enormous and insupportable
burthens, to gratify wicked and discontented spirits, who are, as you are told,
hovering about the camps, threatening mischief. But I call you all in general
council and standing up in this bright sunlight, with every eye upon me, and
declare in language that cannot be mistaken, words of wisdom and truth. I
bring no message from the spirit land. I declare to you the needs and interests
of the living. I have no visions of the night ; no communications from the dis-
contented spirits, who it is said are hovering around our camps, threatening
disaster and death to the living, out of spite for having been rejected from the
good hunting ground, to tell you of ; but openly, in this bright day, I communicate
to you, in deepest solicitude, the long cherished thoughts of a live man ; which,
when fully carried out, cannot fail to establish peace, harmony, concord and
much gladness to this great live nation. I speak not to the dead; for they
cannot hear my words. I speak not to please or benefit the dead ; there is
nought I can do or say, that can by any possibility reach their condition. I
ppeak to the living for the advancement and well being of this great, vigorous,
live multitude. Hear my words.
" From new motions and indications made by the sacred pole, which I have
never witnessed before, I was led to conclude that our forty-three years' journey
in an unknown country had come to its termination. And to avoid hindering
and annoying the whole people with what I had on my mind to be considered,
I called yesterday (pilashash) a council of the leaders of the iksas, and all the
conjurers, for the purpose of examining and deciding on the most prudent
course to pursue, in case it should be finally ascertained, that the leader's pole
had settled permanently.
" They all came, and after hearing my propositions, they put on wise faces,
talked a great deal of the unhappy spirits of our dead friends, of their wants
and desires, and of the great dangers that would befall the people, if they
failed to obey the unreasonable demands made by the spirits, through the
lazy Isht ahnllos, conjurers and dreamers, who, according to their own words,
are the only men through which the spirits can make manifest to the nation
their burthensome and hurtful desires. Finding that they had nothing to say,
nor did they even surmise anything on the subject of the affairs and interests
of the living, I dismissed them as ignorant of, and enemies to, the rights of the
people, and, therefore, improper agents for the transaction of their business.
They were dismissed on account of their secret, malicious designs on the people,
and their ineflieiency in the councils of the nation. I immediately sent out
runners to convene the people in general council to-day. You are all here,
except the secret mongers, and the leaders of the clans, whose mouths and
tongues have been tied up by the Isht ahullo and yushpakammi. The nation is
present to hear my words ; in them there is no secret or hidden meaning. You
will all hear them, and let everyone, who is a man, open his mouth this clear
day, and openly and fearlessly pour out his full and undisguised feelings on the
topics which will be presented.
" From signs which I have just named, I conclude, and I find it the prevailing
impression of this multitude of self-sustaining people, that our long journey of