November 18, 1785 — Meeting with US Treaty Commissioners, Hopewell Plantation, South Carolina

I am glad there is now a peace. I take you by the hand in real friendship. I look upon you and the red people as my children. I have a pipe and a little tobacco to give to the commissioners to smoke in friendship. I have seen much trouble in the late war. I have borne and raised up warriors. I am now old, but hope yet to bear children who will grow up and people our Nation, as we are now under the protection of Congress and shall have no more disturbance. The talk that I give you is from the young warriors, as well as from myself. They rejoice that we have peace, and hope that the chain of friendship will never be broken.

Source: Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838, by John P. Brown (Kingsport TN: Southern Publishers, Inc., 1938), p. 250.