132 



The Dearborn Manuscripts 



return to Boston, names of the individuals with whom lie conversed, 

 and notes of his conversations with them. 



The third volume contains a similar private journal of his second 

 mission in November and December, 1838, of about one hundred 

 pages; and also a journal of a tour to Cattaraugus on a branch of the 

 same subject in 1839 to meet the {Secretary of War, J. R. Poinsett. 

 There are' also bound up with these journals, letters from Ransom H. 

 Gillet, the United States commissioner; from X. T. Strong, a Seneca 

 chief; several from the Secretary of State of Massachusetts; many from 

 Honnondeah, a chief, son of X. T. Strong; more letters from Gov. 

 Everett, and from T. L. Ogden; and finally as cumulative testimony, 

 that nothing might be wanting for the most thorough presentation of 

 the whole case, and not the least light and shade be lacking to com- 

 plete the picture, this last volume contams the identical letters which 

 Gen. Dearborn mailed from day to day during his absence to Mrs. 

 Dearborn, to the number of twenty -nine, covering eighty-seven pages. 

 They bear the postmarks, and have apparently been preserved without 

 diminution or erasure, and in them he speaks without reserve of the 

 minutije of the affair in which he was engaged. The three volumes 

 as a whole present every phase of the transactions in question, as they 

 came before the Massachusetts commissioner. 



The transactions treated of in these volumes did not awaken a national 

 interest, like the removal of the Indians from Georgia in 1829, an 

 event commemorated m volumes entitled Speeches on ilie Indian 

 Bill, 1830, and Essays on the Present Crisis, etc., signed William Penn, 

 by the father of William M. Evarts, and published in 1829. Still they 

 occasioned the printing of as many as fifteen pamphlets at least, by 

 different parties, between the years 18-40 and 1845, large extracts from 

 some of which were published in England. Most of these emanated 

 from those who represented the Indians as greatly wronged, cspeciallv 

 from the yearly meetings of the Society of Friends. The substance of 

 the complaint of these latter was, that the alleged treaty was fraudu- 

 lent; that usage and the law of 1838 required that the consent of the 

 chiefs should have been obtained in open council ; but that after obtain- 

 ing the consent of a small minority in open council, the United States 

 commissioner had obtained the consent of the rest, singly, and not in 

 council; that bribery had been freely used with individuals to secure 

 their consent; that of the 2,000 Senecas not 150 were desirous of 

 going west, counting men, women and children, and that all the 



