to adopt the useful ways of the white people by
degrees, but that you could not lay aside your old
customs all at once. This was a wise answer. It
will be necessary for you to continue your hunting
while the game is so plenty as to be worth pursuing.
But you already know that the game is becoming
scarce, and have reason to expect, that in a few years
more it will be gone. What then will you do to feed
and clothe yourselves, your wives and children?
Brothers, this is an important question; think well
upon it; the oldest hunters may, perhaps, find some
game as long as they live; but before the young men
grow old, all the game will be destroyed; the young
men, then, and the boys, should learn to get food and
clothing without hunting. How are they to do this?
By cultivating the ground as the white people do;
for with what grows out of the ground they can
purchase all other necessaries. If you make fences
to enclose many fields, you can then securely raise
corn, wheat, and hay in abundance, to feed your
families, and as many cattle and hogs as you want,
and the cattle and hogs will give you more meat than
you could ever obtain by hunting, even when game
was plentiest.

Now, Brothers, I have the good pleasure to inform
you, that your good friends, the Quakers, have formed
a wise plan to show your young men and boys the
most useful practices of the white people. They will
choose some prudent good men to instruct them.
These good men will do this only for the love they
bear to you, their fellow men, as children of the Great
Spirit, whom they desire to please, and who will be
pleased with the good they do to you. The Quakers
and the good men they employ, will ask nothing
from you, neither land, nor money, nor skins, nor
furs, for all the good they will render unto you; they
will only request your consent, and the attention of
the young men and boys to learn what will be so
useful.