[Footnote A: Mr. Gallatin.]

The Shawanoes have been known since the first discovery of this
country, as a restless, wandering people, averse to the pursuits of
agriculture, prone to war and the chase. They have, within that period,
successively occupied the southern shore of lake Erie, the banks of the
Ohio and Mississippi, portions of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee,
Kentucky, and eastern Pennsylvania; then again the plains of Ohio, and
now the small remnant of them that remains, are established west of
Missouri and Arkansas. They have been involved in numerous bloody wars
with other tribes; and for near half a century, resisted with a bold,
ferocious spirit, and an indomitable hatred, the progress of the white
settlements in Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and especially Kentucky.
The Shawanoes have declined more rapidly in numbers[A] than any other
tribe of Indians known to the whites. This has been, and we suppose
justly, attributed to their wandering habits and their continual wars.
Although one of their villages is said once to have contained four
thousand souls, their present number does not exceed eighteen hundred.
They have ever been considered a courageous, powerful and faithless
race; who hare claimed for themselves a pre-eminence not only over
other tribes, but also over the whites.[B] Their views in regard to
this superiority were briefly set forth by one of their chiefs at a
convention held at fort Wayne, in 1803.

[Footnote A: John Johnston.]

[Footnote B: General Harrison considers the Shawanoes, Delawares and
Miamis, as much superior to the other tribes of the west.]

"The Master of Life," said he, "who was himself an Indian, made the