Mississippi itself the means of its own safety. Duty has required me to
submit these views to the judgment of the Legislature, but as their
disclosure might embarrass and defeat their effect, they are committed
to the special confidence of the two Houses.

While the extension of the public commerce among the Indian tribes may
deprive of that source of profit such of our citizens as are engaged
in it, it might be worthy the attention of Congress in their care of
individual as well as of the general interest to point in another
direction the enterprise of these citizens, as profitably for themselves
and more usefully for the public. The river Missouri and the Indians
inhabiting it are not as well known as is rendered desirable by their
connection with the Mississippi, and consequently with us. It is,
however, understood that the country on that river is inhabited by
numerous tribes, who furnish great supplies of furs and peltry to the
trade of another nation, carried on in a high latitude through an
infinite number of portages and lakes shut up by ice through a long
season. The commerce on that line could bear no competition with that of
the Missouri, traversing a moderate climate, offering, according to the
best accounts, a continued navigation from its source, and possibly with
a single portage from the Western Ocean, and finding to the Atlantic a
choice of channels through the Illinois or Wabash, the Lakes and Hudson,
through the Ohio and Susquehanna, or Potomac or James rivers, and
through the Tennessee and Savannah rivers. An intelligent officer,
with ten or twelve chosen men, fit for the enterprise and willing to
undertake it, taken from our posts where they may be spared without
inconvenience, might explore the whole line, even to the Western
Ocean, have conferences with the natives on the subject of commercial
intercourse, get admission among them for our traders as others are
admitted, agree on convenient deposits for an interchange of articles,