An Account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha, or Red Jacket, and His People, 1750-1830 eBook

The latter, Governor De Witt Clinton, sent them a reply worthy of his name and office.  It is as follows: 

“All the right that Ogden and his company have to your reservations, is the right of purchasing them when you think it expedient to sell them, that is, they can buy your lands, but no other person can.  You may retain them as long as you please, and you may sell them to Ogden as soon as you please.  You are the owners of these lands in the same way that your brethren the Oneidas, are of their reservations.  They are all that is left of what the Great Spirit gave to your ancestors.  No man shall deprive you of them without your consent.  The State will protect you in the full enjoyment of your property.  We are strong and willing to shield you from oppression.  The Great Spirit looks down on the conduct of mankind, and will punish us if we permit the remnant of the Indian nations which is with us to be injured.  We feel for you, brethren; we shall watch over your interests.  We know that in a future world we shall be called upon to answer for our conduct to our fellow creatures.”

Col.  Stone refers to the Hon. Albert H. Tracy, as having furnished the notes of the council we have just been considering.  The same authority speaking of the eloquence of Red Jacket, says:  “It is evident that the best translations of Indian speeches, must fail to express the beauty and sublimity of the originals; especially of such an original as Red Jacket.  It has been my good fortune to hear him a few times, but only of late years, and when his powers were enfeebled by age, and still more, by intemperance.  But I shall never forget the impression made on me, the first time I saw him in council: 

  “Deep on his front engraven,
  “Deliberation sate, and public care,
  “And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
  “Majestic, though in ruin.

“I can give no idea of the strong impression it made on my mind, though conveyed to it through the medium of an illiterate interpreter, Even in this mangled form, I saw the disjecta membra of a regular and splendid oration.” [Footnote:  Col.  Stone’s Life and Times of Red Jacket.]

The Ogden Company though defeated time and again by the watchfulness, and powerful influence of Red Jacket, continued to ply their endeavors, until by degrees, the remaining portion of their once proud inheritance, was wrested from them, and the orator was left in the decline of life to survey, as he often did in a spirit of dejection, the haunts of his youth, which had nearly all passed into other hands, through the craft and avarice of the white man.

CHAPTER XIX.

Witchcraft—­Lease of Tom-Jemmy—­Testimony of Red Jacket—­Red Jacket’s Philippic—­Finding of the court—­Remarkable interview of Dr. Breckenridge with Red Jacket—­Further expression of views.

In the spring of 1821, a man belonging to Red Jacket’s tribe, fell into a languishing condition, and after lingering for some time, unable to obtain relief, died.  The medicine men were unable to divine the cause of his malady; the circumstances of his sickness and death, were thought to be very peculiar, and his friends could discover no better way of explaining the matter, than to suppose he had been bewitched.