Lewis reports on his current occupation as a schoolteacher. He and his brothers Mark and Benjamin are all healthy, though it is very "sickly" in the western country; on the frontier, contagion typically begins among the soldiers. In an extended commentary, Lewis states that those who live on the frontier have been victimized by a war that he calls destructive, unjust, and unnecessary: ". . . never was their sutch destructtive mesher taken sens the United States was a nation you do not feel it in New England as the people doe in this Country . . . . O what a trieing seen must be to those that experences it to here the howling Savages voices reecoe [reecho] in the forress when before ware was declared, was the dwellings of our brethern and the voice of the ax men was heard the lowing of the ox but now that onse flourishing Country has become a sacrifice to the savages such are the consequences attending ware in this Country . . . ." Also, word that William Henry Harrison has been defeated by the Indians near Detroit.