No-tin-no, a leader of the Ottawa nation, wrote this letter to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, D. D. Mitchell, concerning a shipment of farming implements that the government had promised to the tribe. The Ottawa were frustrated by the delay, and No-tin-no stated that if he did not hear back from Mitchell, he would write to the President of the United States himself. The letter was dictated to Jotham Meeker, a missionary and printer at the Ottawa Baptist Mission near present-day Ottawa, Kansas.