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My Friends and Children, Chiefs of the Osages, Missouris,
Kansas, Ottoes, Panis, Ayowas [sic], Sioux, Pontewattamies [sic], Foxes and Sacs [sic]

Your visit to us at this place has given me great pleasure
and I am very thankful for your having taken the trouble of
so long a journey for this purpose. But I hope it will turn
out as useful to your own people as to us. I lament indeed
the loss of several of your Chiefs by sickness. Accident and
the change in their diet and manner of living has probably
occasioned this, and the will of the Great Spirit to which
we must all submit. Man must die at home or abroad.
Coming abroad it has happened to them, at home it
might have happened to some of you, they are lost,
but friendship and a good understanding between your people
and the United States are established and our mutual
happiness promoted. My children, you have had oppor-
tunities of seeing many things among us, you have seen
how by living in peace, cultivating the Earth and practising [sic]
the useful arts, we, who were once but a few travellers [sic] land-
ing on this Island, are now a great people and growing
daily greater. You too possess good lands, and abundance of it,


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by cultivating that and living in peace you may become as
we are. You have seen here some of the Cherokees and
Chickasaws, who are just now beginning to follow our advice,
to raise food in plenty from the Earth, to make their
own clothes, to learn the useful arts, and to live in peace.
Instead of lessening in their numbers as they did while they
followed war and hunting, they now begin to increase, to
live in ease, peace and plenty. It will give me great pleas-
ure to see all the other nations of red men following their
example and advancing in knowledge, prosperity & happiness.

We shall do every thing [sic] in our power, my children to encour-
age and aid them in this, we cannot do it at once, and
to all, because they are many nations, but we will proceed as
fast as we can in furnishing them what is most useful.

This is the advice, my children, which I wish you to
carry to your nations; tell them that their father here
receives them all into his bosom as his children, that he
wishes to live always in peace and friendship with them,
doing to them all the good in his power, that above all
things he wishes to see them live in peace with one another,
that their wives and children may be safe in their houses,


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that they may have [leasure ?] to provide food in plenty from
the earth, and to make clothing for themselves, that they
may raise children and become strong and happy. Tell
them how many days journey you have travelled among
your white brethren, from St. Louis to this place, from this
place to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston
and back again; that every where [sic] they received you as
brothers and have shewn [sic] to you a sincere friendship, tell
your chiefs, your warriors, your women and children that they
will find in me an affectionate father, desirous to maintain
peace and friendship among all his children, and like every
good father, unwilling to see quarreling and wrangling and
fighting among his children, that we will endeavor to put
our trade with them on a fair and just footing, and so
prevent their being cheated and imposed on by bad men.

And may the Great Spirit take you, my children,
by the hand, conduct you back in health and satisfy to
your families and give you to find them in health
and happiness after your long absence.

I give you my words in writing that you may have
them read to your people, preserve them in your Towns,
refresh your memories with them from time to time, so


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that the remembrance of them may never be lost, but may
be handed down to your children.

       (signed) Thomas Jefferson
       Apr 11. 1806.