War Office April 6. 1795 Sir Mr Parrish duly delivered me your letter of the 12 ultimo, informing me of the much regretted death of your father General Chapin. The President of the United States consents to your succeeding your father as Superintendant of the Affairs of the Six Nations, and you will consider yourself as hereby appointed to that office. The public instructions former by given to your father and which you will find among his papers, you will at present take for the general rule of your conduct. The circumstances which vary the condition of the Oneidas, Tuscaroras and Stockbridge Indians, living in the Oneida country from the other tribes of the Six Nations combined with their distance from your place of residence, may perhaps render it expedient to commit the care of them to some person in their Neighbourhood: Should such an arrangement take place it may possibly occasion some alteration in your pay. The affairs of the Six Nations I expect will henceforward be managed with much less trouble than formerly. The treaty made with them last Fall must supercede all pre-existing causes of complaint. The treaty entered into by M^r Jay with Great Britain will I trust, rid you of all such embarrassments as heretofore have sprung from British influence. And peace with the Western Indians is now in fair prospect. The hostile Nations have all sent in their chiefs to General Wayne to sue for peace, and a general treaty is agreed to be held at his Head Quarters about the middle of June next. So your principal concern will be, to protect the tribes under your superintendance from injury and imposition, which too many of our own people are disposed to practise upon them; diligently to employ all the means under your direction, to promote their comfort and improvement, and to apply the public money and goods placed in your hands with inviolable integrity and prudent oeconomy. A firm belief that you possessed these good dispositions was the ground of your appointment, and I persuade myself that in the execution of your office, you will neither dishonour yourself nor disappoint the expectations of your friends. The perplexities and encreased burthen of managing the affairs of the Six Nations induced an encrease of your father's salary from five hundred to seven hundred dollars a year. Those perplexities being at an end, and the burthen materially lessened from the causes before recited the salary, the Superintendant of the Six Nations is now to be five hundred dollars a year. I am, with much esteem Sir Your Obedient Serv^t Timothy Pickering Sec^y of War Captain Israel Chapin