The Wheeling Repository

CHILLICOTHE, Sept. 23.

We mentioned in our last number the return of the messengers who were dispatched by the acting governor, to ascertain the disposition of the Indians assembled at Greenville & Fort Wayne. On Saturday morning last, the Governor, attended by Blue Jacket, a Chief of the Shawnee nation, with three other Chiefs, entered the court house, and were engaged in a talk till very late in the afternoon. It will be impracticable for us to dive into all the various causes which have produced the recent alarms on our frontiers; there exists a cause, and it will be our endeavour to fathom it. This we are to do from the substance of what passed in the course of the interview. It appears that the Shawnees, Wyandots, Potawatomies, Tawas, Chippewas, Winnepans, Menominees, Miamis, Sacs, and one man from north of the Chippewas had assembled in the neighbourhood of Greenville. The assemblage of so many different nations of Indians within the jurisdiction of this state, their object unknown, was sufficient to create very serious alarms. But their motive for assembling was thus. The Indians within the boundary of the northern Lakes, as far back as they were known towards the Pacific, from thence across to the Mississippi, and down the same to its junction with the Ohio, had formed an union to adhere to one of the chiefs of the Shawnee nation, whose endeavour it was, to instil into their minds the principles of moral philosophy; he having, it is said, by inspiration discovered the fallen state of man, wished to inculcate those principles which would tend to their present welfare and future happiness. The nations within the boundary specified, fired with the desire of uniting as one, and attached to the principles inculcated by the prophet, had (with a few exceptions) come to a resolution to pursue his wholesome admonition. The chiefs of the nations who did not come into this measure, soon found themselves stripped of their subjects, and only a few remained with them: it was observed by one of the orators "a king without subjects filled a station of but little consequence." The issue of which was, that the abandoned chiefs became much exasperated against those who had flocked to the standard of the Shawnee chief. The deserted tribes still continued to reside at the Shawnee towns with only a few adherents. Finding no hopes of recalling their subjects, their next step was to prejudice the mind of Gen. Wells, the Indian agent; against those who adhered to the prophet—this end it appears was accomplished. Gen. Wells could never treat with the combined Indians on friendly terms; but adhered to their enemies at the Shawnee towns, whose object it seems was also to prejudice the Americans against those assembling at Greenville. From this circumstance a jealousy has arisen between the contending parties—which proves that the Indians have their schemes and intrigues, as well as the Whites. One of the orators observed, "Congress have a great many good men, let them take away Wells and put one of them here—we hate him. If they will not remove him, we will." When the Indians are coming in to hear the prophet, he sets doors to stop them. He asks, why go ye to hear the prophet? he is as one possessed of a Devil! It would as soon go to see a dog with the mange. When we want to talk friendly * Being interrogated as to the removal of Wells, they observed their meaning was, they would not adhere to him—
Only with him, he will not listen to us—and from beginning to end his talk is blackguard—he treats us like dogs.

They complained much of the Whites making encroachments upon their territory, and of a few individuals, who had made sale of lands beyond the line of demarkation, but their dispositions towards us appeared friendly. Blue Jacket observed, "We have deluged the country with blood to satiate our revenge, and all to no purpose—we have been the sufferers. The Great Spirit has shewn us the vanity of these things. We have laid down the tomahawk never to take it up again; if it is offered to us by the French, English, Spaniards, or by you, our white brethren, we will not take it."