Page:Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison Vol. 1.djvu/92

54 this mischievous liquor. You well know the innumerable miseries which this fatal liquor has produced amongst you. Many of your young men spend the whole profit of their hunting in whiskey, and their children and old fathers are left to struggle with cold and hunger. Nay more, when reason is driven away by the intoxicating draft—what shocking scenes have been exhibited. The knife of a brother is aimed at a brother's life, and the tomahawk of the son is frequently buried in the head of his father; and those beautiful plains which were only to be stained by the blood of the deer and buffaloe are crimsoned with the gore of your best chiefs and warriors.

But my Children, let us turn away our eyes from those shocking scenes, and let us unite our endeavors to introduce other manners amongst the generation which is now growing up. Your father, the President, has directed me to inform you, that he wishes you to assemble your scattered warriors, and to form towns and villages, in situations best adapted to cultivation; he will cause you to be furnished with horses, cattle, hogs, and implements of husbandry, and will have persons provided to instruct you in the management of them. My children, turn your thoughts seriously to this important object. You know that the game which afforded you subsistence is yearly becoming more scarce, and in a short time you will be left without resource, and your wives and children will in vain ask you for food. My Children, it is very easy for you to avoid this calamity. A great many years ago the white people subsisted as you do now upon the wild beasts of the forest. When those were becoming scarce the Great Spirit communicated to them the method of raising grain for bread, and taught them to bring the ox and the horse under their subjection though they had been as wild as your deer and buffaloe and thus to assist them in cultivating the earth.

My Children, our Great Father, who lives in heaven has admirably contrived this earth for the comfort and happiness of his children; but from the beginning he has made it a law that man should earn his food by his own exertions: the beasts of the forest cannot be taken without trouble and fatigue; nor can bread or clothing be made without 