Note (return) — X. NEGOTIATIONS WITH UNION INDIANS

Negotiations with the Osages had been going on intermittently all this time. No opportunity to press the point of a land cession had ever been neglected and much had been made, in connection with the project for territorial organization, of the fact that the Osages had memorialized Congress for a civil government, they thinking by means of it to prevent further frauds and impositions being practiced upon them.648 Coffin and Elder, suspicious of each other, jealously watched every avenue of approach to Osage confidence. On the ninth of March, Elder inquired if Coffin had been regularly commissioned to open up negotiations anew and asked to be associated with him if he had.649 A treaty was started but not finished for Elder received a private letter from Dole that seemed to confine the negotiations to a mere ascertaining of views.650 Then the Indians grown weary of uncertainty took matters into their own hands and appointed several prominent tribesmen for the express purpose of negotiating a treaty that would end the "suspense as to their future destiny."651 From the treaty of cession that Coffin drafted, he having taken a miserably unfair advantage of Osage isolation and destitution, the Osages turned away in disgust.652 In November, some of their leading men journeyed up to Leroy to invite the dissatisfied Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la to winter with them.653 Coffin seized the occasion to reopen the subject of a cession and the Indians manifested