ONEIDA TRIBE. 



285 



stop — then brother, speak of us in your own 

 country. Our children have run wild, like the 

 beasts of the forest, many of them are not so 

 now — they learn better at the schools. We 

 who are growing old cannot expect much 

 benefit from the school ourselves ; we are too 

 old to learn ; we perhaps soon die. But the 

 children will rise up improved, and benefit their 

 nation. Brother ! in leaving us, may the Great 

 Spirit still favour you with his protection, and 

 carry you safely across the great waters, to 

 your family, as we hear that you have a wife 

 and children in your own country. — All the 

 Indians present, join me in this prayer.' 



Scattered remnants of this once powerful 

 tribe are met with in the American States, and 

 till lately a party of them were settled near the 

 Oneida Lake : but, no missionary being resi- 

 dent among them, and without any friendly 

 aid in agricultural pursuits, they were induced 

 to sell their lands in their poverty to the Ame- 

 ricans, and have gone back into the interior, 

 west of Lake Michigan. When united, in 

 former days, they traversed with the con- 

 federated nations an almost boundless extent 

 of country as the proprietors of the soil, from 

 which they have been gradually driven through 

 the rapacious conduct of the Whites, or influ- 



