In Their Own Words…

It is necessary to make us comfortable—The tract of land embraced in the present limits of our Territory, is small & very poor—We cannot live on it—Many have been obliged to Settle in the Big Swamp where some good land has been found—Give that to us also—We shall then be able to make bread for our wives & children and shall be satisfied—When we left the good land about Tallahassee and Mickasuky which is now covered by the White Skins, we stopped at the Big Swamp because we knew we could not live further South, and because we were told by Governor Duval, that we might do so; and that we should have the land—We now claim the fulfillment of his promise, and of that in the Treaty.— We were often deceived by the Spaniards—They made promises which they never kept—But we were told, the Americans are a straight people—We believed it—We hope we shall never have cause to change our minds.— Brother, you tell us that our Great Father owns a great country over the Big River towards the setting sun and that he is willing to give us a part of it if we will go there and he advises us to send some of our chiefs with the Mus- cogees when they go, to look at it, and bring us back word what sort of Country it is—We have already said we do not intend to move again—If the Muscogees have a disposition to go further towards the setting sun, we are perfectly willing they should go; but we will not go with them—We have no friends there, the people of that country are strangers to us—The Muscogees invited us to go with them, but it was only to make their party stronger—We will not involve ourselves in the troubles of the Muscogees—We are a separate people and have nothing to do with them—We came brother not to see the Mus- cogees, but to hold a talk with our Great Father on our own affairs and to claim of him more land in our own Country—Most of us were born on the land we now inhabit & that which we claim to be surrendered to us.—here our navel strings were first cut & the blood from them sunk into the earth, & made the country dear to us.—We have heard that the Spaniards sold this Country to the Americans—This they had no right to do, the land was not theirs, but belonged to the Seminoles—Brother, we have come here, where we should find Spanish, English, French and Americans; to talk with our Great Father about this matter & have it put right—We have not yet seen our Great Father, we have come many days travel to see him and do not wish to return without shaking hands with him—