Chapter LX
Notions of foreigners about America--Mrs. Jameson--Appraisements of Indian property--Le Jeune's early publication on the Iroquois--Troops for Florida--A question of Indian genealogy--Annuity payments--Indians present a claim of salvage--Death of the Prophet Chusco--Indian sufferings--Gen. Dodge's treaty--Additional debt claims--Gazetteer of Michigan--Stone's Life of Brant--University of Michigan--Christian Keepsake--Indian etymology--Small-pox breaks out on the Missouri--Missionary operation in the north-west--Treaty of Flint River with the Saginaws.
1837. Aug. 16th. A Mr. Nathan, an English traveler, of quiet and pleasing manners, was introduced. He had been to St. Mary's Falls, and to the magnificent entrance into Lake Superior, of whose fine scenery he spoke in terms of admiration. It seems to me that Englishmen and Englishwomen, for I have had a good many of both sexes to visit me recently, look on America very much as one does when he peeps through a magnifying glass on pictures of foreign scenes, and the picturesque ruins of old cities, and the like. They are really very fine, but it is difficult to realize that such things are. It is all an optical deception.
It was clearly so with Marryatt, a very superficial observer; Miss Martineau, who was in search of something ultra and elementary, and even Mrs. Jameson, who had the most accurate and artistic eye of all, but who, with the exception of some bits of womanly heart, appeared to regard our vast woods, and wilds, and lakes, as a magnificent panorama, a painting in oil. It does not appear to occur to them, that here are the very descendants of that old Saxa-Gothic race who sacked Rome, who banished the Stuarts from the English throne, and who have ever, in all positions, used all their might to battle tyranny and oppression, who hate taxations as they hate snakes, and whose day and night dreams have ever been of liberty, that dear cry of Freiheit, whichever war made "Germania" ring. It has appeared to me to be very much the same with the Austrian and Italian functionaries who have wandered as far as Michilimackinack within a few years, but who are yet more slow to appreciate our institutions than the English. The whole problem of our system, one would judge, seems to them like "apples of ashes," instead of the golden fruits of Hesperides. They alike mistake realities for fancies; real states of flesh and blood, bone and muscle, for cosmoramic pictures on a wall. They do not appear to dream how fast our millions reduplicate, what triumphs the plough, and the engine, and loom, are making, how the principles of a well guarded representative system are spreading over the world, and what indomitable moral, and sound inductive principles lie at the bottom of the whole fabric.
Troops arrived from St. Mary's this day, to garrison the Fort, to keep order during the annuity payments. The chiefs from St. Mary's send over a boat for their share of the treaty, tobacco, salt, rice, &c.
18th. Mr. Conner, the sub-agent, writes that the Saginaws are afflicted by want and threatened by starvation; and, to render their condition extreme, the small-pox has broken out amongst them. Ordered relief to be given in the cases specified.
20th. Mrs. Jameson writes to Mrs. Schoolcraft, from Toronto: "If I were to begin by expressing all the pain it gave me to part from you, I should not know when or where to end. I do sometimes thank God, that in many different countries I possess friends worthy that name; kind hearts that feel with and for me; hearts upon which my own could be satisfied to rest; but then that parting, that forced, and often hopeless separation which too often follows such a meeting, makes me repine. I will not say, pettishly, that I could wish never to have known or seen a treasure I cannot possess: no! how can I think of you and feel regret that I have known you? As long as I live, the impression of your kindness, and of your character altogether, remains with me; your image will often come back to me, and I dare to hope that you will not forget me quite. I am not so unreasonable as to ask you to write to me; I know too well how entirely your time is occupied to presume to claim even a few moments of it, and it is a pity, for 'we do not live by bread alone,' and every faculty and affection implanted in us by the good God of nature, craves the food which he has prepared for it, even in this world; so that I do wish you had a little leisure from eating and drinking, cares and household matters, to bestow on less important things, on me for instance! poor little me, at the other side of the world.
"Mrs. McMurray has told you the incidents of our voyage to the Manitouline Island, from thence to Toronto; it was all delightful; the most extraordinary scenery I ever beheld, the wildest! I recall it as a dream. I arrived at my own house at three o'clock on the morning of the 13th, tired and much eaten by those abominable mosquitoes, but otherwise better in health than I have been for many months. Still I have but imperfectly achieved the object of my journey; and I feel that, though I seized on my return every opportunity of seeing and visiting the Indian lodges, I know but too little of them, of the women particularly. If only I had been able to talk a little more to my dear Neengay! how often I think of her with regret, and of you all! But it is in vain to repine. I must be thankful for what I have gained, what I have seen and done! I have written to Mrs. McMurray, and troubled her with several questions relative to the women. I remark generally, that the propinquity of the white man is destruction to the red man; and the farther the Indians are removed from us, the better for them. In their own woods, they are a noble race; brought near to us, a degraded and stupid race. We are destroying them off the face of the earth. May God forgive us our tyranny, our avarice, our ignorance, for it is very terrible to think of!"
21st. Judge McDonnel, of Detroit, reached the island with Captain Clark of St. Clair, these gentlemen having been engaged since spring, in a careful and elaborate appraisement of the Indian improvements, under the 8th article of the treaty of 28th March, 1836. They commenced their labor in the Grand River Valley, and continued it along the entire eastern coast of Lake Michigan, to Michilimackinack, not omitting anything which could, by the most liberal construction, be considered "as giving value to the lands ceded." Not an apple tree, not a house, or log wigwam, and not an acre, once in cultivation, though now waste, was omitted.
They report the whole number of villages in this district at twenty-two, the whole number of improvements at 485, and the gross population at 3,257 souls. This population live in log and bark dwellings of every grade, cultivate 2477 acres of land, on which there are 3,212 apple trees; besides old fields, the aggregate value of which is put at $74,998. They add that these appraisements have been deemed everywhere fully satisfactory to the Indians.
23d. A poor decrepit Indian woman, who was abandoned on the beach by her relatives some ten days ago, applied for relief. It is found that she has been indebted for food in the interim to the benevolence of Mrs. Lafromboise.
23d. "I take the liberty," says A. W. Buel, Esq., of Detroit, "of addressing you concerning the little book in my possession, touching the early history of New France and the Iroquois. You may recollect, perhaps, that on one occasion last winter or spring, when you were in this city, I had some conversation with you concerning it. It is written in French, of old orthography, and was published at Paris, A. D. 1658. It purports to have been written by a Jesuit, Paul Le Jeune; I am however, inclined to think that it was not all written by him, inasmuch as the orthography of the same Indian words varies in different parts of the book. It is rather a small duodecimo volume and contains about 210 pages, of rather coarse print. To give you a better idea of the contents, I will mention the titles of the several chapters." These are omitted.
"A few others are appended. The early history of the Iroquois, and of our own country, even after its settlement by Europeans, you are well aware, is buried in great obscurity. Even Charlevoix's Histoire de Nouvelle France, I believe, has never been translated into English. I have never seen it, if it has been. That work I suppose to be at present the starting point in the history of the Iroquois and New France, as regards minuteness of detail.
"This little book (Le Jeune) was published a considerable time previous. It appears by it that the Jesuits had, for several years previously, sent some letters; but I am confident that this is the first book ever published touching directly and minutely the history of the Iroquois. Caleb Atwater, in his book on western antiquities, speaks of a little work published in Latin at Paris, I think, in 1664, as the first touching the history of New France and the Iroquois. I could not at first decide whether it be of much value, I thought it to be such a book as would immediately find its way to the missionaries, and so small as to be easily overlooked. I became at once so far interested in it, as to translate it into English, not certain that I should ever make any further use of it. I have, however, been solicited by some, either to publish a translation of it, or a compendium of the principal matter contained in it, and beg to trouble you so much as to ask your views of the probability of the utility of doing so. Will the task be equal to the reward?"
25th. Troops from Green Bay pass Mackinack on their way to Florida, to act in the campaign against the Seminoles--a weary long way to send reinforcements; but our army is so small, and has so large a frontier to guard, that it must face to the right and left as often as raw recruits under drill.
26th. Received a copy of the Miner's Free Press of Wisconsin of the 11th of August, containing an abstract of a treaty concluded by Gov. Dodge with the Chippewas of the Upper Mississippi, ceding an important tract of country, lying below the Crow-wing River.
Sept. 3d. The old chief Saganosh died.
4th. The Chippewas of Sault Ste. Marie got into a difficulty, among each other, respecting the true succession of the principal chieftainship, and the chiefs came in a body to leave the matter to me. The point of genealogy to be settled runs through three generations, and was stated thus:--
Gitcheojeedebun, of the Crane totem, had four sons, namely, Maidosagee, Bwoinais, Nawgitchigomee, and Kezhawokumijishkum. Maidosagee, being the eldest, had nine sons, called, Shingabowossin, Sizzah, Kaugayosh, Nattaowa, Ussaba, Wabidjejauk, Muckadaywuckwut, Wabidjejaukons, and Odjeeg. On the principles of Indian descent, these were all Cranes of the proper mark, but the chieftainship would descend in the line of the eldest son's children. This would leave Shingabowossin's eldest son without a competitor. I determined, therefore, to award the first chiefs medal to Kabay Noden, the deceased chief Shingabowossin's eldest son.
10th. The annuity payments commence.
Major Jno. Garland, U.S.A., having succeeded Major Whiting as the general disbursing officer on this frontier, arrived early in the month. This officer has been engaged, with his assistants and the aid of the Indian department, about a week, in preparing the pay rolls of the Indian families, and correcting the lists for deaths, births, and new families. All the payments which were made in silver, at the agency, in my presence, were divided per capita. This business of counting and division took three days, during which time the proportionate share of $21,000, in half dollars, was paid. The annuities in provisions, tobacco, &c., were delivered in bulk to the chiefs of villages, to be divided by them.
Mr. John J. Blois, of Detroit, proposes to publish a gazetteer of Michigan, and writes requesting statistical information, &c., of the upper country, an Indian nomenclature, &c.
Mr. Palfrey writes proposing to me to review Stone's Life of Brant, and Mr. Dearborn, the publisher at New York, sends me the proofs.
15th. The payments are finished, and the Indians begin to disperse. I invested Kabay Noden with his father's medal, and his uncle, Muckadaywuckwut, with a flag; recommending at the same time the division of the St. Mary's Chippewas into three bands, agreeably to fixed geographical boundaries.
Having finished the business of the payments, the disbursing agent embarks on board of the steamer Michigan, and the island, which has been thronged for three weeks with Indians, Indian traders, and visitors, began immediately to empty itself of population. During this assemblage, to pay the Ottawas and Chippewas their annuity, great care and exactitude have been observed by the concurrently acting officers of the army and the Indian department, to carry out strictly the agreements made with them in the spring, by which the payment of half their annuity in silver, due for 1837, was postponed till 1838. Yet it was reported in a few days, and reiterated by the press, that the Indians had been defrauded out of half their annuities, and that goods, and those of a bad quality, had been given them for silver. And my name was coupled with the transaction, although the Indians of all nations who were under my charge, in the State of Michigan, had, from first to last, been treated with the kindness and justice of a father. The Government at Washington came in for no little abuse. Mrs. Jameson wrote from Toronto, asking "whether it was true that a Miami chief had offered $70,000 to enable the Indian Department to pay their debt to the Indians in specie."
23d. The Indians Akukojeesh and Akawkoway brought a case of salvage for my action. They had found a new carriage body, and harness; a box of 7 by 9 glass, and 18 chairs, floating on the lake (Huron), N.E. of the island. They supposed the articles had been thrown overboard, in a recent storm, or by a vessel aground on the point of Goose Island, called Nekuhmenis. The Nekuh is a brant.
30th. Chusco dies.
Completed and transmitted the returns and abstracts of the year's proceedings and expenditures.
Oct 1st. I sent the interpreter and farmers of the Department to perform the funeral rites for Chusco, the Ottawa jossakeed, who died yesterday at the house erected for him on Round Island. He was about 70 years of age; a small man, of light frame and walked a little bent. He had an expression of cunning and knowingness, which induced his people, when young, to think he resembled the muskrat, just rising from the water, after a dive. This trait was implied by his name. For many years he had acted as a jossakeed, or seer, for his tribe. In this business he told me that the powers he relied on, were the spirits [81] of the tortoise, crow, swan, and woodpecker. These he considered his familiar spirits, who received their miraculous power to aid him directly from Mudjee Moneto, or the Great Evil Spirit. After the establishment of the Mission at Mackinack, his wife embraced Christianity. This made him mad. At length his mind ran so much on the theme, that he fell into doubts and glooms when thinking it over, and finally embraced Christianity himself; and he was admitted, after a probation of a year or two, to church membership. I asked him, after this period, how he had deceived his people by the art of powwowing, or jugglery. He said that he had accomplished it by the direct influence of Satan. He had addressed him, on these occasions, and sung his songs to him, beating the drum or shaking the rattle. He adhered firmly to this opinion. He appeared to have great faith in the atonement of Christ, and relied with extraordinary simplicity upon it. He gave a striking proof of this, the autumn after his conversion, when he went with his wife, according to custom, to dig his potatoes on a neighboring island. The wife immediately began to dig. "Stop," said he, "let us first kneel and return thanks for their growth." He was aware of his former weakness on the subject of strong drink, and would not indulge in it after he became a church member.
[Footnote 81: Indians believe animals have souls.]
3d. Received an application for relief from the Black River Chippewas, near Fort Gratiot. It is astonishing how completely the resources of the Indians have failed with the game, on which they formerly relied. When a calamity arrives, such as a white settlement would surmount without an effort, they at once become objects of public charity. Kittemagizzi is their immediate cry. This is now raised by the Black River band, under the influence of small-pox.
14th. Received a copy of the treaty of the 29th of July last with the Chippewas. This tribe, like all the other leading tribes of the race, is destined to fritter away their large domain for temporary and local ends, without making any general and permanent provision for their prosperity. The system of temporary annuities will, at last, leave them without a home. When the buffalo, and the deer, and the beaver, are extinct, the Indian must work or die. In a higher view, there is no blessing which is not pronounced in connection with labor and faith. These the nation falter at.
18th. Finished my report on the additional debt claim, under the treaty of 1836, agreeably to the instructions of the Commission of Indian Affairs, of the 23d March last, and to the published notice of April 10th. These claims on the debt fund of the treaty have received the best consideration of the agent and the Indian chiefs, with the aid of a secretary authorized at Washington, and the result is forwarded with confidence to head-quarters.
19th. My arduous duties during the summer had thrown some of my private correspondence in the rear. It may now be proper to notice some of it. A letter (Aug. 20th) from St. Mary's says: "The schooner John Jacob Astor arrived on the 18th instant from the head of Lake Superior, and the captain brings us information of Mr. Warren's arrival at La Pointe. He attended the treaty at St. Peter's, concluded by Gov. Dodge. The Indians are to receive $700,000 in annuities for twenty years, $100,000 to the half-breeds, and $70,000 for Indian creditors."
"Captain Stanard brought down a specimen of native copper, similar to the piece of forty-nine pounds weight in your cabinet. It was at De l'Isle, fifteen leagues on the north shore from Fond du Lac."
Mr. John T. Blois, of Detroit (Sept. 20th), informs me that he is preparing a Gazetteer of Michigan. "Of the topics," he remarks, "I had proposed to submit to your consideration, one was the etymology of the Indian nomenclature, to the extent it has been adopted in the application of proper names to our lakes, rivers, and other inanimate objects. In the preparation of my work, this subject has frequently presented itself to my mind as one of interesting importance, and whose development is more auspicious, at the present time, than it may be at a future day. I had a particular desire to rescue the Indian names from that oblivion to which the negligence of the early settlers of other States has permitted them to descend, by the substitution, for no reasonable cause, of insignificant English or French names, without regard to either good taste or propriety.
"I wish, among other things, to ask of you the favor to inform me of the origin and signification of the name of our adopted State, Michigan."
A correspondent at Detroit (J.L.S.) writes (21st Sept.): "Bills have been introduced into both Houses to carry out the President's sub-treasury system, and 'tis said Calhoun will support the measure. These bills, which were introduced by Wright and Cambreleng, propose that treasury notes shall be issued not to exceed $12,000,000."
Mr. Palfrey (25th Sept.) suggests my reviewing Col. Stone's "Life of Joseph Brant," and the publishers (Geo. Dearborn and Co.) transmit me the proof sheets on sized paper. I sat down with enthusiasm to read them (as far as sent) preparatory to a decision. Many things are desirable, and most worthy of commendation. But there were some errors of fact and opinions, which I could not pass over without bringing forward facts which I felt no capacity to manage, without giving offence to one whom I had every reason to regard as a friend. Brant had been the scourge of my native State during all the long and bloody war of the Revolution; and his enormities had the less excuse to be plastered over on account of his having received a Christian education, and speaking and writing his own language. He was doubtless a man much above his red brethren generally, for mental conception and boldness. It is true, I had heard all the terrific details of his cruelties from the lips of my father, who was an actor in the scenes described, at an age when impressions sink deep. But I had outlived my youthful impressions, and felt disposed to regard him as one of the most celebrated individuals of his race, which race I had learned to regard as one of the peculiar types of mankind. But I thought it injudicious to lay the story of the Revolution on his shoulders--with the real causes of which his life had about as much to do as the fly on the wagon-wheel, in turning it. I therefore on broad grounds declined it.
The establishment of the University of Michigan and its branches over the State, now excited considerable attention, and I began to receive letters from various quarters on the subject. "At a meeting of the people of this county (Kalamazoo)," says A. Edwards, Esq., "very advantageous offers were made to the Board, in case it was by them deemed proper to establish here one of the two branches contemplated within the senatorial district."
Mr. Daniel B. Woods, Dorchester, Mass., writes me respecting an article for the "Christian Keepsake," which has passed to the hands of the Rev. Mr. Clark, of Philadelphia.
25th. Letters were received to-day from the Secretaries of the Presbyterian, and from the Methodist Boards of Missions at New York, proposing the establishment of missions for the Ottawas and Chippewas, under the fourth article of the treaty of 1836. I advised Mr. Lowry, the organ of the former, and also the Methodist Society, to select positions south of this island in Lake Michigan.
27th. The first snow falls for the season.
30th. The chiefs of the Ottawas at L'Arbre Croche request that I would procure and send them vaccine matter, having heard that the small-pox existed at Grand River, and at Maskigo,
An Ottawa Indian, called Mis-kweiu-wauk (Red Cedar) brought a counterfeit half dollar, saying that he had received it at the payments, from Major Garland. It seemed to me that such was not the fact, but that he had been sent by some saucy fellow. But I thought prudent to give him a good half dollar in its place.
Nov. 4th. Information was received, that a strong party of Boisbrules and Indians, who went west from Red River early in the fall, to hunt the buffalo agreeably to their custom, were met and attacked by the Gros Venters and Sioux of the plains, and one hundred of their number killed in the affray.
10th. Completed arrangements to leave the office during the winter in charge of Mr. F. W. Shearman.
11th. Embarked at Mackinack on board the steamer "Madison," for the lower country.
18th. Arrived at Detroit, and resumed the duties of the superintendency at that point. Charles Rodd reports that three hundred Saginaws have taken shelter on the St. Clair, from the ravages of the small-pox, that they will pass the winter in the vicinity of Point au Barques; and that, consequently, they will not attend the payments at Saginaw this fall.
17th. Asked H. Conner, Esq., the signification 'of "Monguagon," He replied, the true name is Mo-gwau-go [nong], and was a man's name, signifying dirty backsides. It was the name of a Wyandot who died there. Mo, in the Algonquin, means excrement; gwau is a personal term; o, the accusative; and nong, place. I observe that, in the Hebrew, the same word Mo, denotes semen. The mode of combination, too, is not diverse; thus, mo-ab, in Hebrew, is a substantive of two roots, mo, semen, and ab, father.
Paukad [Hebrew], Hebrew, means to strike upon or against any person or thing. Pukatai Chip, is to strike anything animate or inanimate. Paukad, in the same tongue, means a stroke of lightning.
17th. Judge Riggs, who has charge of affairs at Saginaw, reports that about twenty Indians have been carried off by the small-pox, on the Shiawassa, and the same number on the Flint River. Says the disease was first brought to Saginaw by Mr. Gardiner D. Williams, and it was afterwards extended to the Flint by Mr. Campau.
21st. Rev. J. A. Agnew, of N.Y., addresses me as one of the Regents of the University, under a belief that the Board will, very soon, proceed to the election of a chancellor and professors. He takes a very just view of the importance of making it a fundamental point, to base the course of instruction on a sound morality, and of insuring the confidence of religious teachers of evangelical views,
25th. Mr. Conner brought me, some days ago, a cranium of an Indian, named B-tow-i-ge-zhig (Both Sides of the Sun), who was killed and buried near his house in a singular way.
It seems that another Indian, a young man, had fallen from a tree, and, in his descent, injured his testicles, which swelled up amazingly. Etowigezhig laughed at him, which so incensed the young fellow that he suddenly picked up a pot-hook and struck him on the skull. It fractured it, and killed him. So he died for a laugh. He was a good-natured man, about forty-five, and a good hunter. I gave the skull to Mr. Toulmin Smith, a phrenological lecturer.
26th. Mr. Cleaveland (Rev. John) preached his farewell sermon to the First Presbyterian Church, Detroit, from Jonah iii. 2: "Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." This message he has faithfully and ably delivered to them for about five years that he has occupied this pulpit.
27th. A letter of this date, from Fort Union, on the Missouri, published in the St. Louis Bulletin, gives a frightful account of the ravages of the small-pox among the Mandans, Aurickerees, Minitares and Gros Venters, of the Missouri. This disease, which first broke out about the 15th of July, among the Mandans, carried off about fifteen hundred of that tribe. It left about one hundred and thirty souls.[82] It spread rapidly, and during the autumn carried off about half of the two tribes mentioned. It was carried to the Blackfeet, Crees, and Assinaboines, who also suffered dreadfully. Upwards of one thousand of the Blackfeet perished, and about five hundred Minitares. Whole lodges were swept away, and the desolations created were frightful.
[Footnote 82: The report that they were entirely extinguished was an error. The survivors fled to their relatives, the Minnitares, where they increased rapidly, when they returned to their ancient villages on the Missouri, where they now (1851) reside, numbering about five hundred souls.]
28th. Mr. F. Ayer writes from Pokegoma, on Snake River, of the St. Croix Valley of the Upper Mississippi: "Shall we be molested by government soon, or at a future time; or, in case the government sell the land to a company, or to individuals, will they consider our case and make any reservation in our favor?"
Dec. 2d. Rev. Oren O. Thompson writes in relation to Michilimackinack:--
"1. Have you a missionary engaged for that station?
"2. Do you feel the importance and necessity of obtaining one who is already acquainted with the Indian language?
"3. Do you wish to engage one for that station, who is in sentiment a Presbyterian?
"4. Are there appropriations for his support?
"5. What will be his business particularly?
"6. How long will he probably be wanted there?
"7. What, in your opinion, is the prospect of his usefulness there?"
Dec. 1st. Mr. Hamill, of Lawrenceville, N.J., responds to my inquiry for a suitable school for my son--a matter respecting which I am just now very solicitous.
13th. Set out by railroad for Flint River, accompanied by Major Garland and Mr. Conner. Weather very cold, and the snow forming a good road. At Pontiac, we took a double sleigh, and drove out to Flint Village. I was invited to his house by Mr. Hascall, who did everything to render the visit agreeable. Between 400 and 500 Indians were assembled. They appeared poorly clad, and needy, having suffered greatly from the small-pox during the autumn and winter. About 40 had died on the Shiawassa River, and some 30 on the Flint. After the Major had completed the payment of their annuities and delivery of goods, I opened a negotiation with them to complete the sale of their reservations.
16th. In a letter of this date, Dr. Greene, Sec. of the A.B.C., for F. Missions, adverts to the positions heretofore taken, by that board, respecting the missionary establishment at Mackinack. The moral position of that Board, with respect to that Mission, appears to me to be wrong. This mission involves the mission cause, in some important respects, with the entire question of missionary operations over the North-west--reaching from lat. 42° to 49°, with many degrees of longitude; for, from all this region, the Indian boys and girls of the mission have been collected. It began operations with them, I think, in 1822; and having, in this interval, expended many thousand dollars, and erected expensive buildings, it now drops the thing, just at the point when the Indians have commenced important cessions, and when their condition is such that they are not only inclined to receive interior teachers and evangelists, which have been raised at that central point, but, by these cessions to the government, they have provided funds for schools and teachers.
Merely because the excellent superintendent determined, two or three years ago, to leave this important point and enter into secular business, to provide for a growing family; and because the attraction of foreign fields carries young clergymen abroad, to the detriment of the home field, it does not, I think, fulfil the highest requisitions of duty to abandon the field, and thereby to leave it to be said that the Board doubts God's purposes with regard to the red man. If the missionary himself, who has so many years conducted the concern with approbation, was not willing to trust his rewards to a higher power, but aimed, as it were, to steady himself by stretching forth his hand, it seems to me the race ought not to be the sufferers for such a course. They constitute a vastly more appropriate field of labor than the "millions of foreign lands," who sit, to a large extent, unaffected by the Gospel. Not, indeed, that those fields should be neglected; but the Indian race, and these large families of it, are worthy of a warmer sympathy than I can see in Dr. Greene's letters, or the decisions of the Board by whom he is governed.
20th. Signed a supplementary treaty with the Saginaws at Flint. By this treaty the Saginaws relinquish their reserves in this valuable and rapidly settling portion of the country, and agree to accept a location on the head waters of the Osage, which their chiefs, have explored. They are to occupy two of their reservations on the west shores of Saginaw Bay, for five years. The government is to pay them the entire proceeds of the land, as sold in the public land offices. They set apart funds for schools, and to pay their debts. This tribe has now no instructors. They have the reputation of being turbulent, and averse to all plans of improvement. Their history is fraught with deeds of violence. They made bloody inroads on the settlements of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, after the close of the war of the Revolution, and brought away captives. One of these was the notorious and infamous John Tanner. They lived under a perfect dictator, in the person of Kish-ka-ko, who made and altered laws to suit a strong-willed savage mind. They were originally a band of Chippewa refugees. They settled here when the Sauks in the 17th century were driven off. Their name is derived from this. The true sound of the word is Saukinong, or Place of the Sauks. It has been improperly assimilated to Saganosh, i.e., Englishman.
23d. Rev. John A. Clark, of Philadelphia, writes, requesting a contribution to the "Christian Keepsake," which denotes the interest in the Indian subject to be unabated.
Chapter LXI
Tradition of Pontiac's conspiracy and death--Patriot war--Expedition of a body of 250 men to Boisblanc--Question of schools and missions among the Indians--Indian affairs--Storm at Michilimackinack--Life of Brant--Interpreterships and Indian language--A Mohegan--Affair of the "Caroline"--Makons--Plan of names for new towns--Indian legends--Florida war--Patriot war--Arrival of Gen. Scott on the frontiers--Résumé of the difficulties of the Florida war--Natural history and climate of Florida--Death of Doctor Lutner.
1838. Jan. 1st. OFFICE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DETROIT,--In the recent trip to Flint River, Mr. Henry Conner told me one day that he had been acquainted with the Indian person who, in 1763, informed Major Gladwyn, the commanding officer at Detroit, of Pontiac's conspiracy.
The affair had other motives than Carver imagines. She thought more of saving the life of Major Gladwin than of saving the whole Anglo-Saxon race. She had been a very handsome person in her youth, being nearly white, though of Indian blood. Owing to her gallantries, her husband had bit off her nose. When an old woman, she became intemperate, and, on one of these occasions, at a sugar camp on the Clinton River, she fell backward into a boiling kettle of sap, and thus perished. Truly "the way of the transgressor is hard."
He stated the tradition respecting Pontiac's death as it was related by a chief who well knew the facts. The English made great efforts to conciliate a man of such powerful abilities and influence, and endeavored to enlist him as an ambassador among the Western Indians to bring them into their interests. Pontiac used deception in appearing to fall in with their views, and went on this business to the country of the Illinois, which was then about to be surrendered to them. They took the precaution to send with him, as an associate, a chief called Chianocquot, or the Big Cloud, who was strongly attached to their interests. When Pontiac reached the region of the Illinois posts, instead of persuading the Indians to peace and friendship with the English, he advised them not to surrender the country, and, in his addresses to them, he used the most persuasive arguments to dissuade them from permitting the surrendry at all, and gave vent to his natural feelings and sentiments in favor of the French and against the English.
This had been his policy at Detroit. He appeared instinctively to dread the advance of the English race, or, perhaps, really foresaw that their arts and industry, against the adoption of which he so vehemently inveighed, would uproot and crush the aboriginal race. Chianocquot was roused to anger by this duplicity and dispatched him.[83]
[Footnote 83: Nicollet, in his Hydrographical Report in 1841, has placed this tradition in its proper light. He gives a somewhat different account of Pontiac's death, which he states to have taken place when he was in liquor, and the blow was insidiously given.
A Kaskaskia Indian, it seems, was hired for a barrel of rum by an Indian trader to commit the act. The blow he inflicted by his club fractured the skull of his victim, who lingered a while, but eventually died of the wound. This was at Fort Chartres, in Illinois.]
Mr. Conner continued: Pontiac's village and residence near Detroit was Peach Island and the main shore directly abreast of it, north-east. In the summer he lived on the island, and in the winter on the main land.
Pontiac was offended at the Indian who, during the siege, killed McDougel, and would have put him to death for the act had the murderer not fled. The man who did it had been absent, and did not know that this officer had received permission to return to the fort.
4th. Walter Lowrie, Esq., Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions at New York, writes that the Executive Committee have determined to establish a mission and school among the Chippewas and Ottawas of Lake Michigan as early in the spring as suitable men can be procured.
8th. The Canadian, or patriot war, is now at its height. The city has been kept in a perfect turmoil by it for weeks. The setting fire to outbuildings or deserted houses almost every dark night, appears to be connected with it. One dark night I stumbled and fell on an uneven pavement on a part of Jefferson Avenue, and immediately a voice cried "Hurrah for Canada!" There was an intense excitement among the lower classes in its favor, which it required a high degree of moral energy in the lovers of law and order to keep down.
This morning a conservative force of 250 volunteer militia embarked, at two P.M., in a steamer for Amherstburg (the Malden of the war of 1812), to demand the surrendry of the State arms recently taken from their place of deposit--the city jail. This demand is to be made of the patriot refugee force from Canada, who are about to take post on the island of Boisblanc, at the mouth of the Detroit River. It was a well-armed force, with muskets and cartridge-boxes well filled; but it was found that, on the way down the river, their cartridge-boxes had been relieved, by persons friendly to the patriots on board, of every particle of ammunition. The detachment returned about eleven o'clock at night, having proved wholly unsuccessful in the object of the movement.
Mr. Ball, a representative in the local legislature from Kent County, called this day to inquire into the propriety of establishing a sub-agency at Grand Rapids, on Grand River, for the ostensible benefit of the Ottawas in that quarter. The question of the division of funds between schools established for a part of the same people at Gull Prairie, under the care of Mr. Slater, and the separate school at Sault Ste. Marie, in Chippewa County, in the care of Mr. Bingham, both of which are under the general direction of the Baptist Missionary Board at Boston, was considered and approved, and letters written accordingly.
These efforts, at detached points, to improve the race must, we are inclined to believe, eventually fail. Two races so diverse in mind and habits cannot prosper together permanently; but the hope is that temporary good may be done. An Indian who is converted and dies in the faith, is essentially "a brand plucked out of the fire," and no man can undertake to estimate the moral value of the act. A child who is taught to read and write is armed with two requisites for entering civilized life. But the want of general efficient efforts, unobstructed by local laws and deleterious influences, cannot but, in a few years, convince the Boards that the colonization of the tribes West is the best, if not the only hope of prosperity to the race as a race.
9th. Lieut. E. S. Sibley, U.S.A., sets out to pay the Grand River Indians. I commissioned Charles H. Oakes, Esq., to witness the pay rolls. Mr. Conner returns the same day from attending the payments of the Swan Creek and Black River bands. He reports the Indians on the American side of the lines not disposed to engage in the present unhappy contest in the Canadas. Exertions, he affirms, have been made by the British authorities to induce the Chippewas living in Canada, opposite to the mouth of Black River, to engage in the conflict against their revolted people, but without success. They threatened, if matters were pushed, to flee to the American side. He states, also, that a council to the same effect had been held with the Canada Indians opposite Peach Island, at the foot of Lake St. Glair, which resulted in the same declaration.
12th. The appraisement rolls transmitted to Washington by Messrs. Macdonnel & Clarke, the appraisers appointed under the 8th article of the treaty of 28th March, 1836, were judged to be too high; and the subject was referred for revision to Maj. Garland and myself. I this day transmitted a joint reply of the major and myself, stating how impossible it would be to revise so complex a subject without opportunities of personal examination in each case--a business which neither of us desires.
16th. Received the first winter express from Mackinack, transmitting reports from the various persons in official employ there. They report a great storm at that place on the 8th and 9th of December, 1837, in the course of which the light-house on Boisblanc was blown down, and other damage done by the rise of water.
18th. Received the Senate's printed document, No. 1, containing the President's annual message and all the Secretaries' reports. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs recommends the abolition of sub-agencies, and the raising of the pay of interpreters--two measures recommended in my annual report. The department is very much in the hands of ignorant and immoral interpreters, who frequently misconceive the point to be interpreted. Could we raise up a set of educated and moral men for this duty, the department would stand on high grounds. Surely, a sort of normal institute could teach the principles of the Indian grammar, as well as the Greek. There is no sound without a meaning, and no meaning conveyed without an orthographical rule. They do not gabble at random, as some think. Their modes of utterance are, it is true, often defective, but they are not without grammatical laws, I inquired into this matter at my first entrance into the Indian country of the Algonquins, sixteen years ago. I found that verbs had eight classes of conjugations, and ten including the broad vowels; five declensions of nouns, and two sets of pronouns, one to be placed before and the other at the end of the verb and substantive. That all substantives could be changed into verbs; that there were a stock of adjective and prepositional participles, and that the mode of forming compounds and derivatives was varied, but all subject to the most exact rules. They have a very accurate appreciation of sound and its varied meanings, and are pushed to use figures to help out or illustrate a meaning; but the excessive refinements of syntax, for which some contend, are theories in the minds of unpracticed collaborators.
18th. I wrote to Mr. Palfrey, E.N.A.R., declining to review Stone's "Brant," and apprizing him of the preparation of an article on the "North-west," by Mr. I. Lanman. "I take this occasion to say that I have received the proof-sheets of some hundred and fifty pages of Col. Stone's Life of Brant. It is a work somewhat discursive, and involves some critical points in Indian history and customs. I should not feel willing to commence a notice of it, without having the whole before me. The hero of the work hardly exerts influence enough on the revolutionary contest to justify the attempt of piling on him so much of the materials of that momentous contest, and I think, moreover, there is a perceptible attempt made to whitewash a man who lived and died with no slight nor undeserved opprobrium."
19th. Hendrick Apaumut, a Mohegan chief, of Wisconsin, applied for aid, in money, to facilitate his journey to Washington. What the Indians lack, in their business affairs, is system and method; foresight to plan, and stability to carry into effect.
Received a copy of the message of the President, communicating the thrilling circumstances of the recent massacre on board of the ill-fated steamer "Caroline," and the gross outrage of national rights committed by the burning of that boat and the destruction of her crew. Palliatives for the act will undoubtedly be plead; but the act itself will probably make a hero, in the estimation of his countrymen, of Mr. McNab, if it does nothing more.
22d. The friends of education in Michigan, having assembled in convention, issue a circular calling attention to that vital subject, and recommend a "Journal of Public Instruction" to the patronage of the people. There can be no fear of our institutions as long as education is cherished.
24th. Maconse (the Little Bear), chief of the Swan Creeks, writes to Gov. Mason that it is reported some of his people are about to join the Canadian authorities to put down the partial revolt. The Governor, probably thinking I would better know how to deal with him, sends the letter to me. The fellow, whose moral code is not very high, only meant to give himself a little consequence by it. Both he and his people will take good care to keep out of harm's way.
24th. Gov. Mason informs me that he has communicated to the Legislature of Michigan my plan for a system of Indian names communicated to him on the 12th instant, for the new counties and towns, founded on the idea of the avoidance of the number of dead letters reported as annually received at Washington, from their misdirection. This misdirection is supposed to arise chiefly from great repetition of old township, city, county, and village names. Let any one take up a gazetteer or post-office list who wishes to see this. Names that are sonorous and appropriate are rejected; but there is hardly a county in any of the new States without their Springfields, and Fairfields, and Oxfords, and Warwicks without number. Where they do not abound taste is often put to shame. Mud Creek, and Jack's Corner, and Shingle Hollow are doubtless appropriate names compared to some. But cannot we supply a remedy by drawing on the aboriginal vocabulary?
26th. Completed the revision of a body of Indian oral legends, collected during many years with labor. These oral tales show up the Indian in a new light. Their chief value consists in their exhibition of aboriginal opinions. But, if published, incredulity will start up critics to call their authenticity in question. There are so many Indian tales fancied, by writers, that it will hardly be admitted that there exist any real legends. If there be any literary labor which has cost me more than usual pains, it is this. I have weeded out many vulgarisms. I have endeavored to restore the simplicity of the original style. In this I have not always fully succeeded, and it has been sometimes found necessary, to avoid incongruity, to break a legend in two, or cut it short off.
The steamer "Robert Fulton" arrived at Detroit, with three companies of U.S. troops, under the command of Col. Worth, to keep up neutrality, put down the wild "patriot movement," and prevent disturbances on the frontier.
27th. Mr. Trowbridge tells me that he has heard of the arrival of our minister to France (Gen. Cass), at Port Mahon, with his family, on his return to Paris, from his Mediterranean tour. He had carried out a letter to Com. Elliot, from the President, to offer him every facility in this trip to visit the sites of Oriental cities.
30th. Transmit to Washington a plan and estimates for building a dormitory at Mackinack, under the provision of the treaty of March, 1836. Such a building has been long called for at that point, where the Indians are often sojourners, without a place to sleep, or cook the provisions furnished them.
Feb. 1st. The Knickerbocker Magazine says: "That the Indian oratory contains many attributes of true eloquence. With a language so barren, and minds too free for the rules of rhetoric, they still attained a power of touching the feelings, and a sublimity of style, which rival the highest productions of their more cultivated enemies."
7th. Mr. Palfrey, in a letter of this date, observes: "I have only to repeat that, in the preparation of the article (on Stone's 'Brant'--which I hope you will not think of giving up), I trust you will not hesitate to introduce, with the utmost freedom, whatever your respect for the truth of history, and distaste for the tricks of bookmaking, may dictate."
11th. General Jessup writes to the department that, "we have committed the error of attempting to remove the Seminoles, when their lands were not required for agricultural purposes, when they were not in the way of the white inhabitants, and when the greater portion of their country was an unexplored wilderness, of the interior of which we were as ignorant as of the interior of China." He recommends a line of occupancy west of the Kissamee and Okee Chubbe, which they may be allowed to occupy.
20th. W. Lowrie, Esq., S.P.B.F. Missions, in a letter of this date, says: "I was glad to see your suggestion to the government in relation to a cabinet and library in the Indian office."
22d. Charles E. Anderson, Esq., of New York, announces his intention to visit Europe. "I will not leave here until the 15th of March, at least, when I shall take out my wife with me, and anticipate much gratification in presenting her to such a pattern of goodness and true feminine excellence as Mrs. Cass. Anything you wish to forward I will attend to with pleasure, and when in Paris will not forget the interesting subject of your letter, and will inform you what books may be obtained respecting the early history of the country."
26th. Gen. Scott this day arrived at Detroit, with a view to quiet the disturbances on the lines, and see to the proper disposition of the troops along the chain of lakes to effect this end. I immediately called on him, and offered him any of the peculiar facilities, which are at the command of the Indian department, in sending expresses in the Indian country, &c.
27th. Major H. Whiting, U.S.A., writes from St. Augustine, Florida: "I have been favored with your letter of a month since, it having, I dare say, made all due diligence the post office arrangements admit. But the time shows the sort of intercourse I am doomed to have with my Detroit friends. I consider that the country ought to feel under obligations to one who serves her at such a sacrifice. Indeed, she can make us no adequate return, but to allow me to return--the only return I ask. When, however, that favor will be granted is past my guessing. You ask when the war will terminate? You could not puzzle any of us more than by putting such a question. We are more at our wit's end than the war's end. And yet I do not see that anything has been left undone, that might have been done. The army has moved steadily toward its objects. But those objects are like a mirage, they are always nearly the same distance off. What can we do in such a case?
"The army for the last few weeks has been operating in a country that is more than half under water. It has often been difficult to find a spot dry enough for an encampment. If the troops do not all come out web-footed, it is because water can't make a duck's leg.
"I am on the lookout for specimens. I have one small alligator's bones, and have laid in for those of a larger one, an old settler, no doubt going back to Bartram's days. Alligators here have suffered more than the Indians in this war. I should judge that several hundreds have been killed from the boats as they pass up and down. They all have a bed just in the bank of the river, where they sleep in the sun, and the temptation is too great for any rifle, and they generally wake up a little too late. Mineral specimens here are not various. I have collected a few in order to show my friends, who can draw inferences from them. Shells have had a principal hand in the formation of this peninsula. They form the ninety-ninth part of the rock in this quarter. It is a most convenient formation, being worked almost as easily as clay, and yet it makes substantial walls. Frost, I presume, would play the deuce with it. But that is a thing not much known here. I have not yet had the pleasure to fix my northern eye on a piece of ice this winter, though there has been a cream thickness of it once or twice. A pitcher frozen over here makes more noise than the river frozen over at Detroit. The frogs have piped here all winter--happy dogs. I have been out at all times and in all places, and I don't think my nose has been blue but once since I have been here--I have not been blue myself once. I have not yet been to Ponce de Leon's spring. But there are some springs here of a wondrous look. They are so transparent that the fish can scarce believe themselves there in their own element. The Mackinack waters are almost turbid to them. They have a most sulphurous odour, and might renew a man's youth, but it must be at the expense of all sweet smells. I would rather keep on than go back on such conditions.
"In the fight which Lieut. Powell had with the Indians, a Doctor Lutner was killed, who was a scientific man, and had joined the expedition to botanize, &c. He had already done something in that way, and would have done much more. Such a life is a great loss."
Chapter LXII
Indiana tampered with at Grand River--Small-pox in the Missouri Valley--Living history at home--Sunday schools--Agriculture--Indian names--Murder of the Glass family--Dr. Morton's inquiries respecting Indian crania--Necessity of one's writing his name plain--Michigan Gazetteer in preparation--Attempt to make the Indian a political pack-horse--Return to the Agency of Michilimackinack--Indian skulls phrenologically examined--J. Toulmin Smith--Cherokee question--Trip to Grand River--Treaty and annuity payments--The department accused of injustice to the Indians.
1838. March 2d. LIEUT. E. S. SIBLEY, U.S.A., called at the office, and reported certain things which had been put into the heads of the Indians of Grand River, by interested persons, which they had at the recent annuity payments, requested him to state to me. Also, the fact of an outrage upon one of their number, committed by a white person, which should have been redressed at once by the civil magistrates. There is but one way of escape for the Indians living in white communities, that is, to place them, at once, under the protection, and subject to the penalties of our criminal and civil codes.
3d. Renewed and confirmatory accounts are published at St. Louis, of the desolating effects of the small-pox among the Indian tribes on the Missouri. In addition to the tribes mentioned in the first accounts as having suffered, the Upsarokees, or Crows, have been dreadfully afflicted. The various bands of the Pie-gans, Blood Indians, and Blackfeet, have lost great numbers. And the visitation of this appalling disease, against which they have no remedy, has been one of the severest ever felt by these tribes. Compared to it, the loss that the Saginaws and other local bands in Michigan have felt, is small; but it is an instructive fact, that the outbreak has been concurrent in point of time, on the Missouri and in Michigan, which would seem to imply a climatic condition of the atmosphere, on a wide scale, favorable to morbid eruptions.
6th. A.E. Wing, Esq., declines to deliver the annual address before the Michigan Historical Society, owing to other engagements. Few men who have capacity are found willing to devote the time necessary for the preparation of a literary address, even where the materials for it would appear to lie ready. The pressing practical calls of life, in a new country, where there is no hereditary wealth, appear to furnish a valid reason for this. But another reason is, that the materials and frame-work of an address are sought for at too great a distance, and are thought to lie too deeply buried, to be disinterred by any but extraordinary hands. This is a mistake. The subjects are at home, and exist not only in exploring old literary mines, but in the very circumstances around us. What more extraordinary than the current which throws such masses of people daily among us, tearing up, as it were, the old plan of life, and laying the foundations of new social ties in the wilderness. Not a county is settled in the West, the initial steps of which does not furnish legitimate materials for an address which would edify the living generation, and instruct those which are to follow us. A single century hence, and how much tradition will sleep in the grave that might now be rescued! Somebody has written a book "How to Observe," but there is good need of another--"HOW TO THINK."
7th. A new and growing society has every kind of moral want. The necessity for education exists in a thousand forms; and if the friends of it do not bestir themselves, the enemies will. The friends of the Sunday School Union, in Michigan, feeling impressed with these views, issued a circular this day, making an appeal which deserves a hearty response. Michigan mind appears very active in every department.
17th. Received a circular (from Messrs. Baloh & Wales, of Marshall, Calhoun Co.) for the issue of an agricultural paper, adequate to the wants of that interest.
29th. Dr. D. Houghton, the agent of the Geological Survey of the State, which is in progress, commits to me, in a letter of this date, the topic of the Indian terminology, and the bestowal of new names, from the aboriginal vocabulary.
30th. An inquest was held this day, in Ionia, on the head waters of Grand River, on the bodies of a woman and two children, supposed (mistakingly) to have been murdered by the Indians. By the testimony adduced, it is shown that a Mr. Aensel D. Glass, of whose family the bodies consist, lived about four miles from the nearest neighbor. He had not been seen since the 14th of the month. On the 28th, a Mr. Hiram Brown, one of his nearest neighbors, went there on business, and found the house burned, and the bodies of his wife and children lying half burned in the area of the house (which was of logs), having been previously most horribly mutilated. No trace could be found of Mr. Glass, nor of a good rifle, two axes, and two barrels of flour, which he was known to have had.
Suspicion first fell on the Grand River Ottawas. I investigated the subject, and found this unjust. They are a peaceable, orderly, agricultural people, friendly to the settlers, and having no cause of dislike to them. Suspicion next fell on the Saginaws, who hunt in that quarter, and whose character has not recovered from the imputation of murder and plunder committed during the war of 1812. Petossegay was named as the probable aggressor. But on an investigation made by Mr. Conner, at Saginaw, this imputation was also found improbable, and he was dismissed, leaving the horrible mystery unexplained.[84]
[Footnote 84: Mr. Glass was subsequently, in 1841, found alive in Wisconsin.]
April 1st. Dr. Samuel George Morton, of Philadelphia, who is preparing a comprehensive work on aboriginal crania, writes:--"Your obliging letter, offering me any information you might possess that would promote my work on the skulls of the American tribes, makes me free to put to you the following inquiries, inasmuch as I am desirous of seeing as many tribes, and as many individuals as possible, in a limited space of time.
"When will the next annual payment be made at Mackinaw, and how many tribes, and what number of people do you think will assemble on that occasion?
"If I visit Mackinaw, can I readily cross the country to the Mississippi, and what length of time will be required on the journey?
"It is my intention to visit Mackinaw, or any adjacent place, that, in your judgment, will give me the greatest opportunity for seeing the Indians, and I shall await your advice thereon.
"My work progresses rapidly. Twenty of sixty plates are already finished, and I hope to complete the work before the close of the year. I shall soon have an opportunity of forwarding, as far as Detroit, a set of my plates for your inspection and acceptance."
10th. Washington Irving writes: "I have to acknowledge the receipt of a letter informing me of my having been elected an honorary member of the Michigan Historical Society, of which, I perceive, you are President. Not being able to make out the name of the Corresponding Secretary, I have to ask the favor of you to assure the Society of the deep sense I entertain of the honor they have done me, and my ready disposition to promote the views of so meritorious an institution." What is worthy of note herein is this, that the name which the distinguished writer could not make out, is that of one of our most fluent penmen, namely, C.C. Trowbridge, Esq., but who, on scrutiny, I perceive, writes his name worse than anything else, and so inconceivably bad that a stranger might not be able to guess it.
16th. Mr. John T. Blois, who is engaged on a Gazetteer of the State of Michigan, acknowledges the receipt from me of some details respecting the statistical and topographical departments of his work. The difficulty to be met with by all gazetteers of the new States, consists in this, that most classes of the data alter so much in a few years that the books do not present the true state of things. Towns and counties spring up like magic, and if old Aladdin had his lamp he could not more expeditiously cover the shores of streams, and valleys, and plains, with seats, mills, and various institutions belonging to our system.[85]
[Footnote 85: This was proved by the result. The work was published in Oct., 1838, and was a very creditable performance, but the author had been two or three or even four years about it, and the information was just this time out of date.]
19th. A memorial is got up in Ionia County, on Grand River, respecting the Indians, their feelings and their affairs. In it facts are distorted, opinions misapprehended, and the acts and policy of the government and its agents greatly misconceived in some things, and wholly misrepresented in others. And the paper, when examined by the lights of treaties and acts, as they really occurred, is to be regarded as the work of some ambitious man who wishes to get on the backs of the Indians to ride into office, or to promote, in some other way, selfish and concealed ends. All such attempts, though they may seem to "run well" for a time, and may result in temporary success, may be safely left to the counteraction of right opinions. For it has always remained an axiom of truth, verified by every day's experience, "That he that diggeth a pit for his neighbor shall himself fall into it."
20th. General Jo. M. Brown, of the militia, who with the valor of the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant at Christina, marched into Toledo, "brimful of wrath and cabbage," transmits the above precious memorial, not to the Department, or the President, to whom it is ostensibly addressed, but to the editor of a political party paper at Detroit, to "manufacture" public opinion, claiming, at the same time, very high motives for so very disinterested an act, in which the good of the Indians, and the integrity of public faith, are clearly held forth as the aim of the writer. The editor endorsing it with most high-sounding phrases, in which he speaks of it as taking fit place beside the most atrocious fictions, which have been conjured up by mistaken heads and zealous hearts, anxious to ride the aforesaid "Indian question," in relation to the Cherokees and Florida Indians. When all this grandiloquent display of parental sympathy, and a sense of outraged justice, is stripped of its false garbs and put into the crucible of truth, the result is, that political capital can be made just now of the handling of the topic. A delay of a few months (owing to the fiscal crisis at Washington) in the payment of half the annuity for the year, and the neglect or refusal of a few bands to come for the other moiety, as ready in silver, and paid at the stipulated time and place, is made the subject of allusion in this political hue and cry. As to these bands, they are the most peaceable, corn-planting, and semi-agricultural bands in the State. They have been pre-eminently cultivators from an early date of their history, and have been so characteristically addicted to barter, in the products of their industry as to be called by the other Algonquin bands, Ottawas, or traders from the days of Champlain. They had probably as little to do with the Glass murder in Ionia, which is alleged as an instance of hostility to the United States, as Gen. Jo. M. Brown himself.
20th. Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, one of our female writers, in a note of acknowledgment to the Hist. Soc., falls into the same quandary about making out the signature of one of our most expert and beautiful penmen, that Washington Irving did. She could by no means make out Mr. Trowbridge's name, and addressed her reply to me.
21st. Having passed the winter at Detroit, I left the Superintendency office in charge of Mr. Lee, an efficient clerk, and embraced the sailing of one of the earliest vessels for the Upper Lakes, to return to Michilimackinack. Winter still showed some of its aspects there, although gardening at Detroit had been commenced for weeks. The difference in latitude is nearly four and a half degrees; the geographical distance is computed by mariners at 300 miles.
May 1st. In a communication from Mr. J. Toulmin Smith, he expresses his anxiety to procure some Indian skulls from the tribes of the Upper Lakes, to be employed in his lectures on phrenology; and, also, for the purpose of transmission to London. This gentleman lectured acceptably on this topic during the winter at Detroit. During these lectures, I gave him the skull of Etowigezhik, a Chippewa, who was killed on Mr. Conner's farm about four or five years ago. He pronounced the anterior portion to exceed in measurement by one-half an inch the posterior, and drew conclusions favorable to the natural intellect.
10th. The Cherokee question assumes a definite crisis. Gen. Scott issues, under this date, a friendly proclamation to the Cherokees, calling on them to remove peaceably, under the terms of the treaty of 1835, telling them that more than two years had already elapsed after the time agreed on, and that they would be provided, in their removal to the west of the Mississippi, with food, clothing, and every means of transportation; and making a just and humane appeal to their sense of justice to remote; but assuring them that, if these considerations were allowed to pass unheeded, his instructions were imperative, and he had an army at his command, and would be compelled to order it to act in the premises. Such an appeal must be successful.
However much we may sympathize with the poetic view of the subject, and admire that spirit of the human heart which loves to linger about its ancient seats and homes, the question in this case has assumed a purely practical aspect founded on public transactions, which cannot be recalled. The inaptitude of the Indian tribes generally, for conducting the business of self-government, and their want of a wise foresight in anticipating the relative power and position of the two great opposing races in America, namely, the white and red, has been the primary cause of all their treaty difficulties. The treaties themselves are not violated in any respect, but being written by lawyers and legalists, the true intent of some of these provisions, or the relative condition of the parties at a given time, are not sometimes fully appreciated; and at other times, the Indian chiefs exercise diplomatic functions which their nation has not restored, as in the case of the Creeks of Georgia, or to the exercise of which the majority are actually opposed, as in the treaty of New Echota with the Cherokees. Some of their most intelligent and best minds led the way to and signed the treaty of final cession of New Echota, in 1835. But the compensation being found ample, and the provisions wise, and such as would, in the judgment of the United States Senate, secure their prosperity and advancement permanently, that body, on large consideration, yielded its assent, making, at the same time, further concessions to satisfy the malcontents. These are the final arrangements for leaving the land to which Gen. Scott, in his proclamation, alludes.
This tribe has lived in its present central position longer than the period of exact history denotes. They are first heard of under the name of "Achalaques," by the narrator of De Soto's Conquest of Florida, in 1540; within a dozen years of three centuries ago.
June 2d. I proceeded, during the latter part of May, to visit the Ottawas of the southern part of Michigan, to inquire about their schools under the treaty of '36, and to learn, personally, their condition during the state of the rapid settlements pressing around them. I went to Chicago by steamboat, and there found a schooner for Grand River. Here I was pleased to meet our old pastor, Mr. Ferry, as a proprietor and pastor of the newly-planned town of Grand Haven. I had to wait here, some days, for a conveyance to the Grand Rapids, which gave me time to ramble, with my little son, about the sandy eminences of the neighborhood, and to pluck the early spring flowers in the valley. The "Washtenong," a small steamer with a stern-wheel, in due time carried us up. Among the passengers was an emigrant English family from Canada, who landed at a log house in the woods. I was invited, at the Rapids, to take lodgings with Mr. Lewis Campeau, the proprietor of the village. The fall of Grand River here creates an ample water power. The surrounding country is one of the most beautiful and fertile imaginable, and its rise to wealth and populousness must be a mere question of time, and that time hurried on by a speed that is astonishing. This generation will hardly be in their graves before it will have the growth and improvements which, in other countries, are the results of centuries.
5th. I this day, in a public council at the court house, paid the Indians the deferred half annuity of last year (1837) in silver coin, and afterwards concluded a treaty with them, modifying the treaty of 28th March, 1836, so far as to make it obligatory on the government to pay their annuities here instead of Michilimackinack. The annuities in salt, tobacco, provisions and goods, were also delivered to them by agents appointed for the purpose. They expressed themselves, and appeared to be highly gratified, with the just fulfilment of every treaty obligation, and with the kind and benevolent policy and treatment of the American government.
I took this occasion to call their attention to the murder of the Glass family in Ionia, in the month of March last. They utterly disclaimed it, or any participation of any kind in its perpetration. They agreed to send delegates west, in accordance with the 8th art. of the treaty of '36, to explore the country on the sources of the Osage River, for their future permanent residence. They were well content with their teachers and missionaries of all denominations. The Chief Nawequageezhig, in particular, spoke with a commanding voice and just appreciation on the subject, which evinced no ordinary mental elevation, purpose and dignity.
11th. George Bancroft, Esq., of Boston, in a letter of this date, observes: "I can only repeat, what before I have urged on you, to collect all the materials that can illustrate the language, character and origin of the natives, and the early settlement of the French." The encouragement I receive from my literary and scientific friends, and which has been continued these many years, is, indeed, of a character which is calculated to stimulate to new exertions, although the love for such exertions pre-exists. I do not know that I shall live to make use of the materials I collect, or that I have the capacity to digest and employ them; but if not, they may be useful in the hands of other laborers.
16th. Office of Indian Affairs, Michilimackinack. On returning from Grand River, I observed a continuation of the misrepresentations begun last winter, respecting the Indian policy and proceedings of the Department. A ground for these misconceptions, and in some things, perversions, arose from the goods' offer for the half annuity, made in 1837. This offer being rejected by the Michigan Indians, was renewed to those of Wisconsin, and accepted by the Menomonies of Green Bay. Traders and merchants who were expecting the usual payments of cash annuities to the Indians, were sorely disappointed by finding a single tribe in the lake country paid in merchandise. The policy itself was a bad one, and denoted the inexperience and consequent unfitness of Mr. Carey A. Harris for the post of Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington. I anticipated the storm it would raise on the frontiers, and, when the project was transmitted to me, did not attempt to influence my Indians (the Michigan Indians) to accept or reject it, but left it entirely to their own judgments, after appointing two honest men to show the goods and state the prices. A less impartial course appears to have been pursued at Green Bay, where this policy of the "goods offer" of 1837 was loudly called in question. I had shielded the tribes under my care from it, and should have had credit for it from all honest and candid men, but finding no disposition in some quarters to discriminate, I immediately, on reaching home, sat down and wrote a plain and clear statement of the affair for the public press, and having thus satisfied my sense of justice and truth, left others, who had acted wholly out of my jurisdiction and influence, to vindicate themselves. J.W. Edmonds, Esq., and Maj. John Garland, who had been chief actors in the matter, did so. But it seemed like talking against a whirlwind. The whole action of this offer, on the Michigan Indians, was to postpone, by their own consent, the payment of the half annuity in coin one year.
The Grand River Indians declined to come to Mackinack, the place specially named in the treaty, to receive their half annuity, in consequence of which, it was not practicable to send it to them till the next spring. I paid it myself on the 5th of June, 1848, in silver. Yet the rumor of gross injustice to the Indians only gained force as it spread. The Grand River memorialists made "nuts" of it, and General Jim Wilson wielded it for my benefit, in his classical stump speeches in New Hampshire. I had carefully shielded my Indians from a cent's loss, yet my name was pitched into the general condemnation, like the thirteenth biscuit in a baker's dozen. Nothing rolls up so fast as a lie, when once afloat.[86]
[Footnote 86: Harris felt disobliged by my independence of action respecting the "goods offer." He had, in fact, been overreached by a noted commercial house, who dealt heavily in Indian goods in New York, who sold him the goods on credit; but who actually collected the specie from the western land offices, on public drafts, before the year expired. He vented this pique officially, by suspending my report of Oct. 18th, 1837, on the debt claims against the Indians, finally assumed powers in relation to them, directly subversive of the principles of the treaty of March 28th, 1836, which had been negotiated by me, and referred them for revision to a more supple agent of his wishes at New York, who had been one of the efficient actors in the "goods offer" at Green Bay, Wisconsin, as above detailed.]
Chapter LXIII
Missions--Hard times, consequent on over-speculation--Question of the rise of the lakes--Scientific theory--Trip to Washington--Trip to Lake Superior and the Straits of St. Mary--John Tanner--Indian improvements north of Michilimackinack--Great cave--Isle Nabiquon--Superstitious ideas of the Indians connected with females--Scotch royals--McKenzie--Climate of the United States--Foreign coins and natural history--Antique fort in Adams County, Ohio--Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries--Statistics of lands purchased from the Indians--Sun's eclipse--Government payments.
1838. June 18th. W. Lowrie, Esq., Missionary Rooms, N.Y., announces the sending of an agent to explore the missionary field, which it is proposed to occupy by the Presbyterian Board, in the region of Lake Michigan, bespeaking my friendly offices to the agent.
The plethora of success which has animated every department of life and business, puffing them up like gas in a balloon, since about '35 has departed and left the fiscal system perfectly flaccid and lifeless. The rage for speculation in real estate has absorbed all loose cash, and the country is now groaning for its fast-locked circulating medium. A friend at Detroit writes: "With fifty thousand dollars of productive real estate in the city, and as much more in stocks and mortgages, I am absolutely in want of small sums to pay my current expenses, and to rid myself of the mortification produced by this feeling I am prepared to make almost any sacrifice."
27th. Received a communication from the chief engineer of the New York canal (Alfred Barrett, Esq.) on the subject of the rise of water in the lakes. "A question of considerable importance," he says, "has arisen in our State Legislature, in relation to the rise of water in Lake Erie. The lake has been gradually increasing in its height for the last ten years, and has gained an elevation of four feet above that of 1826. The inhabitants along the shores of the lake as far as Detroit, upon both sides, and many throughout our State, have been led to attribute this increase to the erection of the State and the United States pier at the outlet of the lake, opposite Black Rock, which presents an obstruction to the action of the river. But this evidently is not the only cause of the rise of the lake, for, by observation, we find the Niagara River below the dam, and the surface of Lake Ontario, to have increased in the same ratio in the same time. Lake Ontario is four feet higher than it was in 1826.
"Our Legislature has called for information on the subject. And for many important facts we shall be indebted to the goodness of persons residing or acquainted at the places where they may exist. The canal commissioners of the State have desired me to communicate with you, desiring such data as you may have in your possession relevant to the subject. And we are induced to trouble you for information respecting the condition of the water in Lake Superior and other western waters, believing that your extensive acquaintance and close observation in that region have put you in possession of facts which will enable you to determine, with a degree of accuracy, the fluctuations of these waters, and their present increased or diminished height, as well as to trace some of the causes which have an influence in producing the results that are experienced in the rise and fall of the lakes."
This rise and fall is found to be concurrent in volume and time in the whole series of lake basins, and is not at all influenced by artificial constructions. It is believed to be dependent on the annual fall of water, on the water sheds of the lake basins, and the comparative evaporation caused by the annual diffusion of solar heat during the same periods. Nothing less than the accumulation of facts to illustrate these general laws, for considerable periods of time, will, it is believed, philosophically account for the phenomena. Tables of solar heat, rain guages, and scientific measures, to determine the fall of snow over the large continental era of the whole series of basins, are, therefore, the scientific means that should be employed before we can theorize properly. As to periodical rises, actually observed, they are believed to be the very measure of these phenomena, namely, the fall of atmospheric moisture, and the concurrent intensity of solar heat between the unknown periods of the rise.
The fluctuations in Lake Michigan and the Straits of Michilimackinack are capable of being accounted for on a separate theory, namely, the theory of lake winds.
4th July. Letters from Detroit show that the political agitations respecting Canada still continue. One correspondent remarks: "The fourth of July passed off here with more apparent patriotic feeling than I have ever known before. Canada is still across the river--the pat-riots have not yet removed any part of it; they are, however, still busy."
Another says: "Times look troublesome, but I am in hopes that it will all blow over and peace continue, which should be the earnest wish of every Christian."
23d. Public business calling me to Washington, I left Mackinack late in June, and, pushing day and night, reached that city on the 9th of July. The day of my arrival was a hot one, and, during our temporary stop in the cars between the Relay House and Bladensburg, some pickpocket eased me of my pocket-book, containing a treasury-note for $50, about $60 in bills, and sundry papers. The man must have been a genteel and well-dressed fellow, for I conversed with none other, and very adroit at his business. I did not discover my loss till reaching the hotel, and all inquiry was then fruitless. After four days I again set out for the North in an immense train of cars, having half of Congress aboard, as they had just adjourned, and reached Mackinack about the tenth day's travel. This was a toilsome trip, the whole journey to the seat of government and back, say 2,000 miles, being made in some twenty-five days, all stops inclusive.
31st. I set out this day from Mackinack in a boat for Lake Superior and the Straits of St. Mary, for the purpose of estimating the value of the Indian improvements North, under the eighth art. of the treaty of March 28th, 1836. The weather being fine, and anticipating no high winds at this season, I determined, as a means of health and recreation, to take Mrs. S. and her niece, Julia, a maid, and the children along, having tents and every camping apparatus to make the trip a pleasant one. My boat was one of the largest and best of those usually employed in the trade, manned with seven rowers and provided with a mast and sails. An awning was prepared to cover the centre-bar, which was furnished with seats made of our rolled-up beds. Magazines, a spy-glass, &c., &c., served to while away the time, and a well-furnished mess-basket served to make us quite easy in that department. At Sault St. Marie I took on board Mr. Placidus Ord to keep, the record of appraisements.
While here, the notorious John Tanner, who had been on very ill terms with the civilized world for many years--for no reason, it seems, but that it would not support him in idleness--this man, whose thoughts were bitter and suspicious of every one, followed me one day unperceived into a canoe-house, where I had gone alone to inspect a newly-made canoe. He began to talk after his manner, when, lifting my eyes to meet his glance, I saw mischief evidently in their cold, malicious, bandit air, and, looking him determinedly in the eyes, instantly raising my heavy walking-cane, confronted him with the declaration of his secret purpose with a degree of decision of tone and manner which caused him to step back out of the open door and leave the premises. I was perfectly surprised at his dastardly movement, for I had supposed him before to be a brave man, and I heard or saw no more of him while there.[87]
[Footnote 87: Eight years afterwards, namely, in July, 1846, this lawless vagabond waylaid and shot my brother James, having concealed himself in a cedar thicket.]
Tanner was stolen by old Kishkako, the Saginaw, from Kentucky, when he was a boy of about nine years old. He is now a gray-headed, hard-featured old man, whose feelings are at war with every one on earth, white and red. Every attempt to meliorate his manners and Indian notions, has failed. He has invariably misapprehended them, and is more suspicious, revengeful, and bad tempered than any Indian I ever knew. Dr. James, who made, by the way, a mere pack-horse of Indian opinions of him, did not suspect his fidelity, and put many things in his narrative which made the whites about St. Mary's call him an old liar. This enraged him against the Doctor, whom he threatened to kill. He had served me awhile as an interpreter, and, while thus employed, he went to Detroit, and was pleased with a country girl, who was a chambermaid at old Ben. Woodworth's hotel. He married her, but, after having one child, and living with him a year, she was glad to escape with life, and, under the plea of a visit, made some arrangement with the ladies of Fort Brady to slip off, on board of a vessel, and so eluded him. The Legislature afterwards granted her a divorce. He blamed me for the escape, though I was entirely ignorant of its execution, and knew nothing of it, till it had transpired.
In this trip to the North, I called on the Indians to show me their old fields and gardens at every point.
It was found that there were eight geographical bands, consisting of separate villages, living on the ceded tract. The whole population of these did not exceed, by a close count, 569 souls. The population had evidently deteriorated from the days of the French and British rule, when game was abundant. This was the tradition they gave, and was proved by the comparatively large old fields, not now in cultivation, particularly at Portagunisee, at various points on the Straits of St. Mary's, and at Grand Island and its coasts on Lake Superior.
They cultivate chiefly, the potato, and retire in the spring to certain points, where the Acer saccharinum abounds, and all rely on the quantity of maple sugar made. This is eaten by all, and appears to have a fattening effect, particularly on the children. The season of sugar-making is indeed a sort of carnival, at which there is general joy and hilarity. The whole number of acres found in cultivation by individuals, was 125-1/2 acres; and by bands, and in common, 100-3/4 acres, which would give an average of a little over 1/3 of an acre per soul. Even this is thought high. There were 1459 acres of old fields, partly run up in brush. There were also 3162 acres of abandoned village sites, where not a soul lived. I counted 27 dwellings which had a fixity, and nineteen apple trees in the forest. In proportion as they had little, they set a high value on it, and insisted on showing everything, and they gave me a good deal of information. The whole sum appraised to individuals was $3,428 25; and to collective bands, $11,173 $11,173 50.
While off the mural coast of the Pictured Rocks, the lake was perfectly calm, and the wind hushed. I directed the men to row in to the cave or opening of the part where the water has made the most striking inroad upon the solid coast. This coast is a coarse sandstone, easily disintegrated. I doubted if the oarsmen could enter without pulling in their oars. But nothing seemed easier when we attempted it. They, in fact, rowed us, in a few moments, masts standing, into a most extraordinary and gigantic cave, under the loftiest part of the coast. I thought of the rotunda in the Capitol at Washington, as giving some idea of its vastness, but nothing of its dark and sombre appearance; its vast side arches, and the singular influence of the light beaming in from the open lake. I took out my note-book and drew a sketch of this very unique view.[88]
[Footnote 88: See Ethnological Researches, vol. i., plate xliv.]
The next day the calmness continued on the lake, and I took advantage of it to visit the dimly seen island in the lake, off Presque Isle and Granite Point, called Nabikwon by the Indians, from the effects of mirage. Its deep volcanic chasms, and upheaved rocks, tell a story of mighty elemental conflicts in the season of storms; but it did not reward me with much in the way of natural history, except in geological specimens.
Aug. 7th. The Chippewas have some strange notions. Articles which have been stepped over by Indian females are considered unclean, and are condemned by the men. Great aversion is shown by the females at finding hairs drawn out by the comb, which they roll up, and, making a hole in the ashes, bury.
Indian females never go before a man: they never walk in front in the path, or cross in front of the place where a sachem is sitting.
A man will never eat out of the same dish with a woman. The lodge-separation, at the period of illness, is universally observed, where the original manners have not been broken down. If she have no barks, or apukwas to make a separate lodge, a mere booth or bower of branches is made near by.
10th. Mrs. Deborah Schoolcraft Johnson died at Albany, aged fifty-four years. The father of this lady (John McKenzie, usually called McKenny) was a native of Scotland, and served with credit in the regiment of Royal Highlanders, before the Revolutionary War, of whose movements he kept a journal. He was present during the siege of Fort Niagara, in 1759, witnessed the death of Gen. Prideau, and participated in the capture of the works, under Sir William Johnson. He was also engaged in the movements of Gen. Bradstreet, to relieve the fort of Detroit from the hosts brought against it by Pontiac and his confederates three or four years after. He settled, after the war, as a merchant at Anthony's Nose, on the Mohawk, where he was surprised, his store and dwelling-house pillaged, and himself scalped. He recovered from this, as the blow he received had only been stunning, and the copious bleeding, as is usual in such cases, had soon restored consciousness. He then settled at Albany, a place of comparative safety, and devoted himself in old age to instruction. He left a numerous family. His son John, who embraced the medical profession, became a distinguished man in Washington County (N.Y.), where his science, as a practitioner, and his talents as a politician, rendered him alike eminent. But he embraced the politics of Burr, a man whose talents he admired, when that erratic man ran for Governor of the State, and shortly after died. Five daughters married respectable individuals in the county, all of whom have left families. Of such threads of genealogy is the base of society in all parts of America composed. One of her granddaughters, now living in Paris, is a lady entitled to respect, on various accounts. Deborah, whose death is announced, married in early life, as her first husband, John Schoolcraft, Jr., Esq., a most gifted son of one of the actors and patriots of the revolution--a man who was engaged in one of its earliest movements; who shared its deepest perils, and lived long to enjoy its triumphs. The early death of this object of her choice, induced her in after years to contract a second marriage with an enterprising son of Massachusetts (R. Johnson), with whom she migrated to Detroit. Death here again, in a few years, left her free to rejoin her relatives in Albany, where, at last at ease in her temporal affairs, she finally fell a victim to consumption, at a not very advanced age, meeting her death with the calmness and preparedness of a Christian.
"As those we love decay, we die in part."
25th. Returned to Michilimackinack, at a quarter past one o'clock, A.M., from my trip to the north, for the appraisal of the Indian improvements.
31st. According to observations kept, the average temperature of the month of August (lat. 42°) was 69.16 degrees. Last year the average temperature of the same month was sixty-five degrees. The average temperature of the entire summer of 1838 was 70.85; while that of the summer of 1837 was but 65.48. Our lakes must sink with such a temperature, if the comparative degree of heat has been kept up in the upper lakes during the year.
Sept. 4th. Troops arrive at Fort Mackinack to attend the payments.
An officer of the army, who has spent a year or so in Florida, and has just returned to Michigan, says: "I have seen much that was well worth seeing, am much wiser than I was before, and am all the better contented with a lot midway of the map. The climate of Florida, during the winter, was truly delicious, but the summers, a part of one of which I saw and felt, are uncomfortable, perhaps more so than our winters. This puts the scales even, if, it do not incline the balance in our favor. The summer annoyances of insects, &c., are more than a counterbalance for our ice and snow, especially when we can rectify their influences by a well-warmed house."
6th. A literary friend in Paris writes: "I send a box to Detroit to-day, to the address of Mr. Trowbridge. It contains, for you, upwards of 200 coins, among which is one Chinese, and the rest ancient. You must busy yourself in arranging and deciphering them. I send you, also, some specimens, one from the catacombs of Paris, others from the great excavations of Maestricht, where such large antediluvian remains have been found, also relics from the field of Waterloo. The petrifactions are from Mount Lebanon."
Mr. Palfrey writes in relation to the expected notice of Stone's "Brant," but my engagements have not permitted me to write a line on the subject.
10th. Dr. John Locke, of Ohio, announces the discovery in Adams County, in that State, of the remains of an antique fort, supposed to be 600 years old. It is on a plateau 500 feet above Brush Creek, and is estimated at 800 to 1000 feet above the Ohio at low water. It is covered by soil, forest, and trees. Some of the trees in the vicinity are twenty-one feet in diameter. He infers the age from a large chestnut in the enclosure. His data would give A.D. 1238, as the date of the abandonment. We must approach the subject of our western antiquities with great care and not allow hasty and warm fancies to run away with us.
12th. A communication from Mr. Rafn informs me that the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Copenhagen, Denmark, have honored me by enrolling my name as one of its members.
12th. Congress publishes a statement submitted by the Indian Bureau, showing, 1. That upwards of fifty treaties have been concluded with various tribes since Jan. 1, 1830, for their removal to the west, in accordance with the principles of the organic act of May 28th, 1830. 2. That by these treaties 109,879,937 acres of land have been acquired. 3. That the probable value of this land to the United States is $137,349,946. 4. That the total cost of these cessions, including the various expenses of carrying the treaties into effect, is $70,059,505.
13th. Major Chancy Bush, Assistant to Major Garland, the Disbursing Agent, arrives with funds to make the annuity payments.
14th. The Cherokees West, meet in general council to consult on their affairs, and adopt some measures preparatory to the arrival of the eastern body of the nation. John Ridge, a chief of note of the Cherokees West, states, that this meeting is entirely pacific--entirely deliberative--and by no means of a hostile character, as has been falsely reported.
18th. The obscurity which attends an Indian's power of ratiocination may be judged of by the following claim, verbally made to me and supported by some bit of writing, this day, by Gabriel Muccutapenais, an Ottawa chief of L'Arbre Croche. He states that, at one time, a trader took from him forty beavers; at another, thirty beavers and bears; at another, ten beavers, and at another, thirty beavers, and four carcasses of beavers, for all which he received no pay, although promised it. He also served as a clerk or sub-trader for a merchant, for which he was to have received $500, and never received a cent. He requests the President of the United States to pay for all these things. On inquiry, the skins were hunted, and the service rendered, and the wrong received at Athabasca Lake, in the Hudson's Bay Territory, when he was a young man. He is now about sixty-six years old.
18th. The sun's eclipse took place, and was very plainly visible to the naked eye, agreeably to the calculation for its commencement and termination. I took the occasion of its termination (four o'clock, fifty minutes) to set my watch by astronomical time.
18th. The Indian payments were completed by Major Bush this day. These payments included the full annuity for 1838, and the deferred half annuity for 1837, making a total of $47,000, which was paid in coin per capita.
The whole number of Indians on the pay rolls this year amounted to 4,872, of whom 1,197 were in the Grand River Valley. Last year they numbered, in all, 4,561, denoting an increase of 311. This increase, however, is partly due to emigrations from the south, and partly to imperfect counts last season, and but partially to the increase of births over deaths. The annuity divided $12 57 on the North, $22 50 in the Middle, or Thunder Bay district, and $11 50 on the Southern pay list. The Indians requested that these per capita divisions might be equalized, but the terms in the treaty itself create the geographical districts.
Chapter LXIV
Descendant of one spared at the massacre of St. Bartholomew's--Death of Gen. Clarke--Massacre of Peurifoy's family in Florida--Gen. Harrison's historical discourse--Death of an emigrant on board a steamboat--Murder of an Indian--History of Mackinack--Incidents of the treaty of 29th July, 1837--Mr. Fleming's account of the missionaries leaving Georgia, and of the improvements of the Indians west--Death of Black Hawk--Incidents of his life and character--Dreadful cruelty of the Pawnees in burning a female captive--Cherokee emigration--Phrenology--Return to Detroit--University--Indian affairs--Cherokee removal--Indians shot at Fort Snelling.
1838. Sept. 20th, COUNT CASTLENEAU, a French gentleman on his travels in America, brings me a note of introduction from a friend. I was impressed with his suavity of manners, and the interest he manifested in natural history, and furnished him some of our characteristic northern specimens in mineralogy. I understood him to say, in some familiar conversation, that he was the descendant of a child saved accidentally at the memorable massacre of St. Bartholomew's; and suppose, of course, that he is of Protestant parentage.
21st. The St. Louis papers are dressed in mourning, on account of the death of Gen. William Clarke. Few men have acted a more distinguished part in the Indian history of the country. He was widely known and respected by the Indians on the prairies, who sent in their delegations to him with all the pomp and pride of so many eastern Rajahs. Gen. Clarke was, I believe, the second territorial governor of Missouri, an office which he held until it became a state, when Congress provided the office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for him. He contributed largely, by his enterprise and knowledge, to the prosperity of the west. The expedition which he led, in conjunction with Capt. Meriwether Lewis, across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, in 1805 and 1806, first opened the way to the consideration of its resources and occupancy. Without that expedition, Oregon would have been a foreign province.
24th. Letters from Florida indicate the war with the Seminoles to be lingering, without reasonable expectation of bringing it soon to a close. Etha Emathla, however, the chief of the Tallasees, is daily expected to come in, his children being already arrived, and he has promised to bring in his people.
But what a war of details, which are harassing to the troops, whose action is paralyzed in a maze of swamps and morasses; and how many scenes has it given birth to which are appalling to the heart! A recent letter from a Mr. T.D. Peurifoy, Superintendent of the Alachua Mission, describes a most shocking murder in his own family, communicated to him at first by letter:--
"It informed me," he says, "that the Indians had murdered my family! I set out for home, hoping that it might not prove as bad as the letter stated; but, O my God, it is even worse! My precious children, Corick, Pierce and Elizabeth, were killed and burned up in the house. My dear wife was stabbed, shot, and stamped, seemingly to death, in the yard. But after the wretches went to pack up their plunder, she revived and crawled off from the scene of death, to suffer a thousand deaths during the dreadful night which she spent alone by the side of a pond, bleeding at four bullet holes and more than half a dozen stabs--three deep gashes to the bone on her head and three stabs through the ribs, besides a number of small cuts and bruises. She is yet living; and O, help me to pray that she may yet live! My negroes lay dead all about the yard and woods, and my everything else burned to ashes."
Oct. 1st. Mr. Palfrey, Editor of the North American Review, requests me (Sept. 20th) to notice Gen. Harrison's late discourse on the aboriginal history, delivered before the Ohio Historical Society. The difficulty in all these cares is to steer clear of some objectional theory. To the General, the Delawares have appeared to play the key-note. But it has not fallen to his lot, while bearing a distinguished part in Indian affairs in the west, to examine their ancient history with much attention.
The steamer Madison arrived with a crowd of emigrants for the west, one of whom had died on the passage from Detroit. It proved to be a young man named Jesse Cummings, from Groton, N.H., a member of the Congregational Church of that place. Having no pastor, I conducted the religious observance of the funeral, and selected a spot for his burial, in a high part of the Presbyterian burial ground, towards the N.E., where a few loose stones are gathered to mark the place.
2d. Wakazo, a chief, sent to tell me that an Ottawa Indian, Ishquondaim's son, had killed a Chippewa called Debaindung, of Manistee River. Both had been drinking. I informed him that an Indian killing an Indian on a reserve, where the case occurred, which is still "Indian country," did not call for the interposition of our law. Our criminal Indian code, which is defective, applies only to the murder of white men killed in the Indian country. So that justice for a white man and an Indian is weighed in two scales.
3d. Mrs. Therese Schindler, a daughter of a former factor of the N.W. Company at Mackinack, visited the office. I inquired her age. She replied 63, which would give the year 1775 as her birth. Having lived through a historical era of much interest, on this island, and possessing her faculties unimpaired, I obtained the following facts from her. The British commanding officers remembered by her were Sinclair, Robinson, and Doyle. The interpreters acting under them, extending to a later period, were Charles Góthier, Lamott, Charles Chabollier, and John Asken. The first interpreter here was Hans, a half-breed, and father to the present chief Ance, of Point St. Ignace. His father had been a Hollander, as the name implies. Longlade was the interpreter at old Fort Mackinack, on the main, at the massacre. She says she recollects the transference of the post to the island. If so, that event could not have happened, so as to be recollected by her, till about 1780. Asken went along with the British troops on the final surrender of the island to the Americans in 1796, and returned in the surprise and taking of the island in 1812.
5th. Finished my report on a resolution of Congress of March 19th respecting the interference of the British Indian Department in the Indian affairs of the frontier. The treaty of Ghent terminated the war between Great Britain and the United States, but it did not terminate the feelings and spirit with which the Indian tribes had, from the fall of their French power regarded them.
Mr. Warren (Lyman M.), of La Pointe, Lake Superior, visited the office. Having been long a trader in the north, and well acquainted with Indian affairs in that quarter, I took occasion to inquire into the circumstances of the cession of the treaty of the 29th of July, 1837, and asked him why it was that so little had been given for so large a cession, comprehending the very best lands of the Chippewas in the Mississippi Valley. He detailed a series of petty intrigues by the St. Peter's agent, who had flattered two of the Pillager chiefs, and loaded them with new clothes and presents. One of these, Hole-in-the-Day, came down twenty days before the time. The Pillagers, in fact, made the treaty. The bands of the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers, who really lived on the land and owned it, had, in effect, no voice. So with respect to the La Pointe Indians. He stated that Gen. Dodge really knew nothing of the fertility and value of the country purchased, having never set foot on it. Governor Dodge thought the tract chiefly valuable for its pine, and natural mill-power; and there was no one to undeceive him. He had been authorized to offer $1,300; but the Chippewas managed badly--they knew nothing of thousands, or how the annuity would divide among so many, and were, in fact, cowed down by the braggadocia of the flattered Pillager war chief, Hole-in-the-Day.
Mr. Warren stated that the Lac Courtorielle band had not united in the sale, and would not attend the payment of the annuities; nor would the St. Croix and Lac du Flambeau Indians. He said the present of $19,000 would not exceed a breech-cloth and a pair of leggins apiece. I have not the means of testing these facts, but have the highest confidence in the character, sense of justice, and good natural judgment of Gov. Dodge. He may have been ill advised of some facts. The Pillagers certainly do not, I think, as a band, own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the Mississippi below Sandy Lake, but their warlike character has a sensible influence on those tribes, quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers. The sources of these rivers are valuable only for their pineries, and their valleys only become fertile below their falls and principal rapids.
From Mr. Warren's statements, the sub-agencies of Crow-wing River and La Pointe have been improperly divided by a longitudinal instead of a latitudinal line, by which it happens that the St. Croix and Chippewa River Indians are required to travel from 200 to 350 miles up the Mississippi, by all its falls and rapids, to Crow-wing River, to get their pay. The chief, Hole-in-the-Day, referred to, was one of the most hardened, blood-thirsty wretches of whom I have ever heard. Mr. Aitkin, the elder, told me that having once surprised and killed a Sioux family, the fellow picked up a little girl, who had fled from the lodge, and pitched her into the Mississippi. The current bore her against a point of land. Seeing it, the hardened wretch ran down and again pushed her in.
8th. The Rev. Mr. Fleming and the Rev. Mr. Dougherty arrived as missionaries under the Presbyterian Board at New York. Mr. Fleming stated that he had been one of the expelled missionaries from the Creek country, Georgia. That he had labored four years there, under the American Board of Commissioners, and had learned the Creek language so as to preach in it, by first writing his discourse. The order to have the missionaries quit the Creek country was given by Capt. Armstrong (now Act. Supt. Western Territory), who then lived at the Choctaw agency, sixty miles off, and was sudden and unexpected. He went to see him for the purpose of refuting the charges, but found Gen. Arbuckle there, as acting agent, who told him that, in Capt. Armstrong's absence, he had nothing to do but to enforce the order.
Mr. Fleming said that he had since been in the Indian country, west, in the region of the Osage, &c., and spoke highly in favor of the fertility of the country, and the advanced state of the Indians who had emigrated. He said the belt of country immediately west of Missouri State line, was decidedly the richest in point of natural fertility in the region. That there was considerable wood on the streams, and of an excellent kind, namely: hickory, hackberry, cottonwood, cypress, with blackjack on the hills, which made excellent fire-wood.
As an instance of the improvement made by the Indians in their removal, he said that the first party of Creeks who went west, immediately after Mackintosh's Treaty, were the most degraded Indians in Georgia; but that recently, on the arrival of the large body of Creeks at the west, they found their brethren in the possession of every comfort, and decidedly superior to them. He said that the Maumee Ottawas, so besotted in their habits on leaving Ohio, had already improved; were planting; had given up drink, and listened to teachers of the Gospel. He spoke of the Shawnese as being in a state of enviable advancement, &c.
11th. First frost at Mackinack for the season.
A friend at Detroit writes: "The Rev. Mr. Duffield (called as pastor here) preached last Sabbath. In the morning, when he finished, there was scarce a dry eye in the house. He excels in the pathetic--his voice and whole manner being suited to that style. He is clear-headed, and has considerable power of illustration, though different from Mr. Cleaveland. I like him much on first hearing."
13th. Finished grading and planting trees in front of the dormitory.
12th. The Iowa Gazette mentions the death of Black Hawk, who was buried, agreeably to his own request, by being placed on the surface of the earth, in a sitting posture, with his cane clenched in his hands. His body was then enclosed with palings, and the earth filled in. This is said to be the method in which Sac chiefs are usually buried. The spectacle of his sepulchre was witnessed by many persons who were anxious to witness the last resting place of a man who had made so much noise and disturbance.
He was 71 years of age, having, by his own account, published in 1833, been born in the Sac village on Rock River, in 1767--the year of the death of Pontiac. In his indomitable enmity to the (American type of the) Anglo-Saxon race, he was animated with the spirit of this celebrated chief, and had some of his powers of combination. His strong predilections for the British Government were undoubtedly fostered by the annual visits of his tribe to the depot of Malden. His denial of the authority of the men who, in 1804, sold the Sac and Fox country, east of the Mississippi, may have had the sanction of his own judgment, but without it he would have found it no difficult matter to hatch up a cause of war with the United States. That war seems to have been brooded over many years: it had been the subject of innumerable war messages to the various tribes, a large number of whom had favored his views. And when it broke out in the spring of 1832, the suddenness of the movement, the great cruelties of the onset, and the comparatively defenceless state of the frontier, gave it all its alarming power. As soon as the army could be got to the frontiers, and the Indian force brought to action, the contest was over. The battle of the Badaxe annihilated his forces, and he was carried a prisoner to Washington. But he was more to be respected and pitied than blamed. His errors were the result of ignorance, and none of the cruelties of the war were directly chargeable to him. He was honest in his belief--honest in the opinion that the country east of the Mississippi had been unjustly wrested from him; and there is no doubt but the trespasses and injuries received from the reckless frontier emigrants were of a character that provoked retaliation. He has been compared, in some things, to Pontiac. Like him, he sought to restore his people to a position and rights, which he did not perceive were inevitably lost. He possessed a degree of intellectual vigor and decision of character far beyond the mass, and may be regarded as one of the principal minds of the Indians of the first half of the 19th century.
15th. A letter of this date from Council Bluffs, describes a most shocking and tragic death of a Sioux girl, of only fourteen years of age, who was sacrificed to the spirit of corn, by the Pawnees, on the 22d of February last. For this purpose she was placed on a foot-rest, between two trees, about two feet apart, and raised above the ground, just high enough to have a torturing fire built under her feet. Here she was held by two warriors, who mounted the rest beside her, and who applied lighted splinters under her arms. At a given signal a hundred arrows were let fly, and her whole body was pierced. These were immediately withdrawn, and her flesh cut from her bones in small pieces, which were put into baskets, and carried into the corn-field, where the grain was being planted, and the blood squeezed out in each hill.
CHEROKEE EMIGRATION.--A letter from Gen. Scott of this date, to the Governor of Georgia, states that, of the two parties of Cherokees, or those who are for and against the treaty of New Echota, only about five hundred (including three hundred and seventy-sixty Creeks) remain east of the Mississippi, and of the anties a little over five thousand souls. About two thousand five hundred of these had been emigrated in June, when the emigration was suspended on account of sickness. An arrangement was made in the month of September, by which John Ross was, in effect, constituted the contractor for the removal of the remainder (twelve thousand five hundred) of his people.
16th. Mr. J. Toulmin Smith, the phrenologist, of Boston, writes: "I perfectly concur with you in your remarks on the minor details of phrenology. They have hitherto been loose and vague, but though at first sight they seem minor, they will be found, in truth, of great importance to the thorough elucidation and application of the subject.
"The Indian tribes do, indeed, present most interesting subjects for examination, and it is an anxious wish of my mind to be able to examine them thoroughly (per crania), and also to compare them with the crania found in their ancient burial-places, supposed to be the remnants of an anterior race. Not only will this throw light on their history, but it will do so also on those 'minor' but most interesting points, to the elucidation of which my attention has been, and is particularly directed. I should be exceedingly happy to be able to compare also one or two female Indian skulls with the males of the same tribe. The females, I presume, may be easily recognized phrenologically; it may be done with facility by the large philoprogenitiveness, and the smaller general size of the head."
22d. Rumor says that Mr. Harris, Com. Indian Affairs, had entered into land speculations in Arkansas, which led Mr. Van Buren to call for a report, which, being made, the President returned it with the pithy and laconic endorsement "unsatisfactory," whereupon Mr. H. tendered his resignation. Rumor also says, that Mr. T. Hartley Crawford, of Pennsylvania, is appointed in his stead. This gentleman is represented to be a person of some ability; an old black-letter lawyer, but a man who is apt to lose sight of main questions in the search after technicalities. They say he is very opinionated and dogmatical; personally unacquainted with the character of the Indians, and the geography of the western country, and not likely, therefore, to be very ready or practical in the administrative duties of the office. Time must test this, and time sometimes agreeably disappoints us.
29th. I reached Detroit this day, with my family, in the new steamer "Illinois," having had a pleasant passage, for the season, from Mackinack. The style of the lake steamboats is greatly improved within the last few years, and one of the first-class boats bears no slight resemblance to a floating parlor, where every attention and comfort is promptly provided. He must be fastidious, indeed, who is not pleased.
31st. Col. Whiting called at my office to get the loan of an elementary work on conchology. Dr. Pitcher stated that the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan had adopted a plan of buildings to be erected at Ann Arbor. Four Saginaw delegates are sent in by Ogema Kegido, to ascertain the time and place of their annuity payments.
Nov. 4th. The Regents of the University of Michigan adopt resolutions respecting the establishment of branches in the counties, which are apprehended to be rather in advance of their means; but the measure is stated to be popular.
3d. Mr. James Lawrence Schoolcraft, the acting agent of Indian Affairs at Michilimackinack, writes respecting the additional claim of the estate of John Johnston, an Irish gentleman of the upper country, whose name is mentioned in a prior part of these memoirs: "I have looked over the old books belonging to the estate, and find the following result upon the most critical examination.
"William's account of the beaver skins due was 7,221. Mr. Edmonds' account was 4,313. My own 6,043. William's account exceeded mine 1,178. Mine exceeds Mr. Edmonds' 1,730. In my account I have cast out all debts (or skins) charged for liquor. William did not. Mr. Edmonds did.
"I found all the books but one in the box, which one, according to William's account, contained five hundred and sixty skins. From these five hundred and sixty, I made deductions corresponding with the skins found to be charged in all the other books, so that the difference can be but very trifling, and, by the liberal discount made, I think, will be in favor of the claim."
The account stands thus:--
Due 6,043 beavers at $4 = $24,172 00 Average loss on four years' trade, from 1813 to 1816, at $2,014 per annum = $8,056 00
Add:--
Item 2 as allowed in 1836. $6,040 00 " 6 " " . $9,192 00 " 7 " " . $1,141 00 " 8 " " . $44 90 = $10,384 72 ---------- $42,612 72 Allowed in 1836. = $32,436 72 ---------- $10,176 00
"Books are shown from 1816 to 1828, a period of twelve years; consequently twelve divided into 24,172 will give the average loss for the four years' trade, for which no books are shown. Mr. Edmonds made an error in computing the number of skins due; the other difference was, of course, in consequence. I am inclined to think Mr. E. was prejudiced against the claim, as I cannot see how he could so much reduce the number of skins due."
6th. The Rev. Mr. Potter, a missionary for sixteen years among the Cherokees, called and introduced himself to me. He said that he thought the Cherokees had received enough for their lands; that they were peaceably emigrating west, but had been delayed by low water in the streams. While thus waiting, about five hundred persons had died.
This gentleman had been stationed at Creek Path, where the morally celebrated Catherine Brown and her brother and parents lived. While there, he had a church of about sixty members, and thinks they exhibited as good evidences of Christianity as the same number of whites would do. He speaks in raptures of the country this people are living in, and are now emigrating from, in the Cumberland Mountains, as full of springs, a region of great salubrity, fertility, and picturesque beauty. Says a portion of the country, to which they are embarking west, is also fertile.
Florida, the papers of this date tell us, is now free from Indians. This can only be strictly true of the towns on the Apalachicola, &c. The majority of them are doubtless gone.
A Wyandot, of Michigan, named Thomas Short, complains that his lands, at Flat Rock, are overflowed by raising a mill-dam. Dispatched a special agent to inquire into and remedy this trespass.
The Swan Creeks complain that a Frenchman, named Yaks, having been permitted to live in one of their houses at Salt River, on rent, refuses to leave it, intending to set up a pre-emption right to the lands. I replied, "That is a matter I will inquire into. But you have ceded the land without stipulating for improvements, and cannot prevent pre-emptions."
7th. I received instructions from Washington, dated 29th Oct., to draw requisitions in favor of the Ottawas and Chippewas, for the amounts awarded for their public improvements in the lower peninsula, agreeably to the estimates of Messrs. MacDonnel and Clarke, under the treaty of March 28th, 1836.
Eshtonaquot (Clear Sky), principal chief of the Swan Creeks, states that his people will be ready to remove to their location on the Osage, by the middle of next summer. He states that his brother-in-law, an Indian, living at River Au Sables, in Upper Canada, reports that a large number of Potawattomies have fled to that province from Illinois; and that many of the Grand River Ottawas, during the past summer, visited the Manitoulines, and gave in their names to migrate thither. Little reliance can be placed on this information. Besides, the government does not propose to hinder the movements of the Indians.
Maj. Garland states that he was present, a few years ago, at Fort Snelling, Upper Mississippi, at the time the fracas occurred in which the Sioux fired on the Chippewas and killed four of their number. Col. Snelling exhibited the greatest decision of character on this occasion. He immediately put the garrison under arms, and seized four Sioux, and put them in hold till their tribe should surrender the real murderers. Next day the demand was complied with, by the delivery of two men, to replace two of the four hostages, the other two of the prisoners being, by hap, the murderers. The Indian agent vacillated as to the course to be adopted. Col. Snelling said that he would take the responsibility of acting. He then turned the aggressors over to the Chippewas, saying: "Punish them according to your law; and, if you do not, I will." The Chippewas selected nine of their party as executioners. They then told the prisoners to run, and shot them down as they fled. Two were shot on the very day after the murder, and two the following day, when they were brought in. One of the latter was a fine, bold, tall young fellow, who, having hold of the other prisoner's hand, observed him to tremble. He instantly threw his hand loose from him, declaring "that he was ashamed of being made to suffer with a coward."
8th. Col. Whiting exhibited to me, at his office, several bound volumes of MSS., being the orderly book of his father, an adjutant in a regiment of Massachusetts Continentals, during the great struggle of 1776. Many of the orders of Gen. Washington show the exact care and knowledge of details, which went to make up a part of his military reputation.
12th. Texas is involved in troubles with fierce and intractable bands of Indians. Among these the Camanches are prominent, who have shown themselves, in force, near Bexar, and in a conflict killed ten Americans with arrows.
Chapter LXV
Embark for New York--A glimpse of Texan affairs--Toltecan monuments--Indian population of Texas--Horrible effects of drinking ardent spirits among the Indians--Mr. Gallatin--His opinions on various subjects of philosophy and history--Visit to the South--Philadelphia--Washington--Indian affairs--Debt claim--Leave to visit Europe--Question of neutrality--Mr. Van Buren--American imaginative literature--Knickerbocker--Résumé of the Indian question of sovereignty.
1838. Nov. 14th. I Embarked in a steamer, with my family, for New York, having the double object of placing my children at eligible boarding-schools, and seeking the renovation of Mrs. S.'s health. The season being boisterous, we ran along shore from river to river, putting in and putting out, in nautical phrase, as we could. On the way, scarlatina developed itself in my daughter. Fortunately a Dr. Hume was among the passengers, by whose timely remedies the case was successfully treated, and a temporary stop at Buffalo enabled us to pursue our way down the canal. Ice and frost were now the cause of apprehension, and our canal packet was at length frozen in, when reaching the vicinity of Utica, which we entered in sleighs. In conversation on board the packet boat on the canal, Mr. Thomas Borden, of Buffalo Bayou, Texas, stated that there is a mistake in the current report of the Camanche Indians being about to join the Mexicans. They are, perhaps, in league with the Spaniards of Nacogdoches, who now cry out for the federal constitution of 1824; but there is no coalition between them and the Mexicans. Lamar is elected president, the population has greatly increased within the last year, customs are collected, taxes paid, and a revenue raised to support the government. Mr. Borden said, he was one of the original three hundred families who went to Texas, with my early friend Stephen F. Austin, Esq., the founder of Texas, of whom he spoke highly.
"Hurry" was the word on all parts of our route; but, after reaching the Hudson, we felt more at ease, and we reached New York and got into lodgings, on the evening of the 24th (Nov.). The next day was celebrated, to the joy of the children, as "Evacuation Day," by a brilliant display of the military, our windows overlooking the Park, which was the focus of this turnout.
28th. In conversation with the Rev. Henry Dwight, of. Geneva, he made some pertinent remarks on the Toltecan monuments, and the skill of this ancient people in architecture, in connection with some specimens of antiquities just deposited in the New York Historical Society. This nation had not only preceded the Aztecs in time, as is very clearly shown by the traditions of the latter, but also, there is every reason to believe, in knowledge.
29th. Texas papers contain the following statistics of the Indian population of that Republic, of whom it is estimated that there may be 20,000. "The different tribes known as wild Indians, comprise about 24,000, west and south-west. There are on the north ten tribes, known as the 'Ten United Bands,' between the Trinity and Red River, numbering between 3 and 4000. Of these latter tribes, three are said to have wandered off beyond the Rio Grande and the Rocky Mountains. Of the Comances, nearly one-half of the Indians known by that name are, and have always been, without the limits, and press upon the tribes of New Mexico. In all it appears that we have within the limits of Texas, an Indian population of 20,000--of whom one-fifth may be accounted Warriors. There are one or two remnants of tribes (perhaps not more than fifty in number) living within the settlements of the whites, whom they supply with venison, and in that way support themselves.
"Some of these tribes are the hereditary enemies of Mexico, who has nevertheless furnished them with arms and ammunition, in the hope of inciting them against our people, at a risk to her own. If, looking beyond our borders, we turn our eyes to the north, we behold within striking distance of the United States frontier on the north-west, an indigenous Indian population of 150,000, and on their western frontier 46,000; in all between 2 and 300,000 Indians within the jurisdiction of the United States--against whom, were they to combine, they could at any moment direct a war force of 60,000 men."
These popular estimates, may serve the purpose of general comparison, but require some considerable abatements. There is a tendency to estimate the numbers of Indian tribes like those of flocks of birds and schools of fish. We soon get into thousands, and where the theme is guessing, thousands are soon added to thousands.
Dec. 4th. James L. Schoolcraft of Michilimackinack, in a letter of Nov. 10th, describes a most revolting scene of murder, which, owing to the effects of drinking, recently occurred at the Menomonie pay-ground at Grande Chute, Wisconsin.
"Since closing my letter of this morning, Lieut. Root, just from Fort Winnebago, informs me that he attended the payment of the Menomonies, at the Grande Chute; that liquor, as usual, had found its way to the place of payment, and that, in consequence, an Indian had killed two Indian women. That the individual (murderer) was taken to the tent of the agent, Colonel Boyd, but that, in consequence of the repeated and threatening demands of the Indians for the man, the agent was obliged to deliver him up to them, and that they then, in front of the tent, inflicted wounds of death, from six different blades, upon the body of the murderer, beat his brain out with clubs, and then threw his body upon a burning fire, after which he was dragged some distance, to which place he might be traced by attached embers strewed along the path.
"A child was crushed to death by a drunken Indian accidentally. Lieut. Root informs me that he left the ground, soon after the scene above alluded to, and that many of the Indians were armed with knives, and in much excitement."
6th. I visited Mr. Gallatin at his house in Bleecker Street, and spent the entire morning in listening to his instructive conversation, in the course of which he spoke of early education, geometric arithmetic, the principles of languages and history, American and European. He said, speaking of the
EARLY EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.--Few children are taught to read well early, and, in consequence, they never can become good readers. A page should, as it were, dissolve before the eye, and be absorbed by the mind. Reading and spelling correctly cannot be too early taught, and should be thoroughly taught.
Arithmetic.--G. There is no good arithmetic in which the reasons are given, so as to be intelligible to children. Condorcet wrote the best tract on the subject, while in confinement at a widow's house near Paris, before his execution. The language of arithmetic is universal, the eight digits serving all combinations. They were not introduced till 1200. The Russians count by sticks and beads. The Romans must have had some such method. M stood for 1000, D for 500, C for 100, L for 50, X for ten, V for five, and I for one. But how could they multiply complex sums by placing one under another.
LANGUAGES.--S. How desirable it would be if so simple a system could be applied to language.
G. Ah! it was not designed by the Creator. He evidently designed diversity. I have recently received some of the native vocabularies from Mackenzie--the Blackfeet and Fall Indians, &c. Parker had furnished in his travels vocabularies of the Nez Perces, Chinooks, &c.
LEADING FAMILIES.--S. The term Algonquin, as commonly understood, is not sufficiently comprehensive for the people indicated.
G. I intended to extend it by adding the term "Lenape." The Choctaw and the Muscogee is radically the same. The Chickasaw and Choctaw has been previously deemed one. Du Pratz wrote about the Mobilian language without even suspecting that it was the Choctaw.
G. The National Institute at Paris has printed Mr. Duponceau's Prize Essay on the Algonquin. Dr. James wrote unsuccessfully for the prize. Duponceau first mentioned you to me. He has freely translated from your lectures on the substantive, which gives you a European reputation.
PUBLISHERS ON PHILOLOGY.--G. There is no patronage for such works here. Germany and France are the only countries where treatises on philology can be published. It is Berlin or Paris, and of these Berlin holds the first place. In Great Britain, as in this country, there is not sufficient interest on the subject for booksellers to take hold of mere works of fact of this sort. They are given to reading tales and light literature, as here.
ORAL TALES OF THE INDIANS--G. Your "Indian Tales" and your "Hieroglyphics" would sell here; but grammatical materials on the languages will not do, unless they can be arranged as appendices.
S. I urged Governor Cass to write on this subject, and he declined.
G. Does he understand the languages?
S. Pronouns, in our Indian languages, are of a more permanent character than philologists have admitted. They endure in some form, in kindred dialects, the most diverse.
G. This is true, the sign is always left, and enables one, clearly enough, to trace stocks. Dialects are easily made. There are many in France, and they fill other parts of Europe. Every department in France has one.
DISCRIMINATING VIEWS OF PHILOLOGY AND PHILOLOGISTS.--G. It is not clear what Heckewelder meant by "whistling sound," in the prefix pronouns. I told Mr. Duponceau that it had been better that the gentleman's MSS. were left as he originally wrote them, with mere corrections as to grammar--that we should then, in fact, have had Indian information. For Heckewelder thought and felt like a Delaware, and believed all their stories.[89]
[Footnote 89: This admission of the re-composition of Mr. Heckewelder's letters, and the excellent missionary's general deficiency, furnishes a striking confirmation of the views and sagacity of a critic of the North American Review, writing on that topic, in 1825. And the more so, as those views were conjectural, but they were the conjectures of one who had personally known Mr. Heckewelder.]
MONOSYLLABIC LANGUAGE.--G. You have asserted that all the Indian roots are monosyllables.
S. Most of them, not all. This is a branch to which I have paid particular attention; and if there is anything in Indian philology in which I deem myself at home, it is in the analysis of Indian words, the digging out of roots, and showing their derivatives and compounds.
G. The societies would print your observations on these topics. They are of much interest.
ORIGIN OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGE.--S. The Hebrew is based on roots like the Indian, which appear to have strong analogies to the Semitic family. It is not clearly Hindostanee, or Chinese, or Norse. I have perused Rafn's Grammar by Marsh. The Icelandic (language) clearly lies at the foundation of the Teutonic.
G. I have not seen this. The grammatical principles of the Hebrew [90] are widely different (from the Indian). There is, in this respect, no resemblance. I think the Indian language has principles akin to the Greek. The middle moods, or voices, in the Greek and Indian dialects are alike; they make the imperfect past, or aorist, in a similar manner.
[Footnote 90: Mr. G. did not understand the Hebrew, and was not aware that the person he addressed had made a study of it in particular reference to the Indian.]
PATOIS.--G. The great impediment to popular instruction in France, is the multiplicity of patois, and the tenacity of the peasantry for them. The same objection exists to the use of so many Indian dialects by such numbers of petty tribes. Pity these were not all abolished. They can never prosper without coming on to general grounds in this respect.
CHINESE.--Mr. Duponceau had published Col. Galindo's account of the Ottomic of Mexico, and likened it to the Chinese. It was the very reverse.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE.--S. The English language of Chaucer's day, is based on the Frisic, Belgic, and Low Dutch; and not on the Saxon. (Examples were given. He fully assented to this, and used his familiarity with European history to demonstrate it.)
G. There was, in fact, no Anglo-Saxon but that of Alfred, which was the old English. The early migrations were from Belgium. Doubtless the Teutons had made the conquest ascribed to them, but I think they did not revolutionize the language. They conquered the people, but not the language.
WASHINGTON IRVING.--G. Washington Irving is the most popular writer. Anything from his pen would sell.
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.--Several years ago, J. J. A. put into my hands the journal of his traders on the Columbia, desiring me to use it. I put it into the hands of Malte Brun, at Paris, who employed the geographical facts in his work, but paid but little respect to Mr. Astor, whom he regarded merely as a merchant seeking his own profit, and not a discoverer. He had not even sent a man to observe the facts in the natural history. Astor did not like it. He was restive several years, and then gave Washington Irving $5,000 to take up the MSS. This is the History of "Astoria."
RAFINESQUE.--This erratic naturalist being referred to, he said--
"Who is Rafinesque, and what is his character?"
NAPOLEON AND NERO.--Bonaparte was a mathematician; but, whatever he did, he did not appreciate other branches of science and research. On taking Rome, he carried to Paris all the Pope's archives, containing, in fact, the materials for the secret history of Europe. The papers occupied seventy large boxes, which were carefully corded and sealed, and put away in a garret of the Louvre at Paris, and never opened. On the restoration of the Bourbons, Louis XVIII. gave them back to the Pope's nuncio. The seals had never been broken.
Bonaparte hated Tacitus. He was an aristocrat, he said, and lied in his history. He had blackened the character of Nero merely because he was a republican. "That may be, sire," said ----, "but it is not the generally received opinion, and authorities sustain him." "Read Suetonius," said he. "Truly," said M. Gallatin, "it is there stated that the people strewed flowers on Nero's grave for years."
ALGIC RESEARCHES.--The oral legends of the Indians collected by me being adhered to, he said, "Take care that, in publishing your Indian legends, you do not subject yourself to the imputations made against Macpherson."
On leaving the hall, whither he came to see me out, he said: "I am seventy-eight, and (assuming a gayer vein) in a good state of preservation." He was then a little bent, but preserved in conversation the vivacity of his prime. He had, I think, been a man of about five feet ten or eleven inches. His accent and tone of voice are decidedly French. His eye, which is black and penetrating, kindled up readily. He wore a black silk cap to hide baldness.
15th. A singular coincidence of the names and ages of Indian chiefs, is shown in the following notice from a Russian source:--
"We have just received from Nova Archangesk, an account of the death of the chief of one of the most powerful tribes of North America, Black Hawk, who was suddenly carried off on the banks of the River Moivna, in the seventy-first year of his age. The loss of this chief, who kept up friendly relations with the authorities of the Russian colony, and was always hostile to the English, is felt in a lively manner by the Russian government, who rested great hopes on the influence exercised by Black Hawk, not only over his own tribe, but also over all the neighboring nations. The Czar has ordered the new governor-general of the Russian colony in America to endeavor by all means to secure the friendship of the three sons of Black Hawk, the eldest of whom, now forty-eight years of age, has succeeded his father in the government of the tribe."--Le Commerce.
22d. I left New York on the 12th, in the cars, with Mrs. Schoolcraft and the children, for Washington, stopping at the Princeton depot, and taking a carriage for Princeton. I determined to leave my son at the Round Hill School, in charge of Mr. Hart, and the next day went to Philadelphia, where I accepted the invitation of Gen. Robert Patterson to spend a few days at his tasteful mansion in Locust street. I visited the Academy of Natural Sciences, and examined Dr. Samuel George Morton's extensive collection of Indian crania. While here, I placed my daughter in the private school of the Misses Guild, South Fourth Street. I attended one of the "Wistar parties" of the season, on the 15th, at Mr. Lea's, the distinguished bookseller and conchologist, and reached the city of Washington on the 21st, taking lodgings at my excellent friends, the Miss Polks.
24th. Submitted an application to the department for expending a small part of the Indian education fund, for furthering the general object, by publishing, for the use of teachers and scholars, a compendious dictionary, and general grammar of the Indian languages.
25th. In a conference with Mr. Murray, of Pennsylvania, a recent commissioner to adjust Indian claims at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, he gave me Mr. Robert Stuart's testimony respecting the Indian trade, to read. It appears from the document that the gain on trade of the American Fur Company, from 1824 to 1827, was $167,000. From 1827 to 1834 it was $195,000. From the aggregate of ten years' business, there is to be deducted $45,000, being a loss from 1817 to 1824, which leaves a profit on seventeen years' trade of $317,000.
Mr. Murray presented me a copy of the Commissioner's report. These claims have not yet received the action of the department. The commissioners set out with requiring of traders high evidence of the individual indebtedness by Indians. They finally decided that the Winnebago debts were national. They went further--they approved and adopted the decision of a meeting of the claimants themselves, as to the application to individual firms, of the fund. This decision was subsequently sanctioned by eight Winnebago chiefs, who were stated to be authorized to act for the nation.
The error, in all these cases, seems to be, that where a tribe has agreed to set apart a generic sum to satisfy debts, and the United States has accepted the trusteeship of determining the individual shares, that the Indians, who cannot read, or write, or understand figures, or accounts at all, and cannot possibly tell the arithmetical difference between one figure and another, should yet be made the subject of these minor appeals. The TRUSTEE himself should determine that, by such testimony as he approves, and not appear to seek to bolster up the decisions of truth and faithfulness, by calling on Indian ignorance and imbecility, which is subject to be operated on by every species of selfishness.
25th. I applied to the department this day, by letter, for leave of absence from my post on the frontier, to visit Europe.
26th. I called on Mr. Poinsett, the Secretary of War, and received from him the permission which I had yesterday solicited. I also called on the President (Mr. Van Buren), who, in turning the conversation to the state of disturbances on the frontier, evinced the deepest interest that neutrality should be preserved, and asked me whether the United States Marshal at Detroit had faithfully performed his duty.
27th. Visited Mr. Paulding (Secretary of the Navy) in the evening. Found him a father aged bald-headed man, of striking physiognomy, prominent intellectual developments, and easy dignified manners. It was pleasing to recognize one of the prominent authors of Salmagundi, which I had read in my schoolboy days, and never even hoped to see the author of this bit of fun in our incipient literature. For it is upon this, and the still higher effort of Irving's facetious History of New York, that we must base our imaginative literature. They first taught us that we had a right to laugh. We were going on, on so very stiff a model, that, without the Knickerbocker, we should not have found it out.
28th. I prepared a list of queries for the department, designed to elicit a more precise and reliable account of the Indian tribes than has yet appeared. It is astonishing how much gross error exists in the popular mind respecting their true character.
Talk of an Indian--why the very stare Says, plain as language, Sir, have you been there? Do tell me, has a Potawattomie a soul, And have the tribes a language? Now that's droll-- They tell me some have tails like wolves, and others claws, Those Winnebagoes, and Piankashaws.
30th. Mr. Paulding transmits a note of thanks for some Indian words. The euphony of the aboriginal vocabulary impresses most persons. In most of their languages this appears to result, in part, from the fact that a vowel and a consonant go in pairs--i.e. a vowel either precedes or follows a consonant, and it is comparatively rare that two consonants are required to be uttered together. There is but one language that has the th, so common in English. Sh and gh are, however, frequently sounded in the Chippewa. The most musical words are found in the great Muscogee and Algonquin families, and it is in these that the regular succession of vowels and consonants is found.
31st. The year 1838 has been a marked one in our Indian relations. The southern Indians have experienced an extensive breaking up, in their social institutions, and been thrown, by the process of emigration, west of the Mississippi, and the policy of the government on this head, which was first shadowed out in 1825, and finally sanctioned by the act of land exchanges, 1830, may be deemed as having been practically settled. The Cherokees, who required the movements of an army to induce them to carry out the principles of the treaty of New Echota, have made their first geographical movement since the discovery of the continent, a period of 331 years. How much longer they had dwelt in the country abandoned we know not. They clung to it with almost a death grasp. It is a lovely region, and replete with a thousand advantages and a thousand reminiscences. Nothing but the drum of the Anglo-Saxon race could have given them an effectual warning to go. Gen. Scott, in his well advised admonitory proclamation, well said, that the voice under which both he and they acted is imperative, and that by heeding it, it is hoped that "they will spare him the horror of witnessing the destruction of the Cherokees." The great Muskogee family had been broken up, by the act of Georgia, before. The Seminoles, who belong to that family, broke out themselves in a foolish hostility very late in 1835, and have kept up a perfectly senseless warfare, in the shelter of hummocks and quagmires since. The Choctaws and Chickasaws, with a wise forecast, had forseen their position, and the utter impossibility of setting up independent governments in the boundaries of the States. It is now evident to all, that the salvation of these interesting relics of Oriental races lies in colonization west. Their teachers, the last to see the truth, have fully assented to it. Public sentiment has settled on that ground; sound policy dictates it; and the most enlarged philanthropy for the Indian race perceives its best hopes in the measure.
Chapter LXVI
Sentiments of loyalty--Northern Antiquarian Society--Indian statistics--Rhode Island Historical Society--Gen. Macomb--Lines in the Odjibwa language by a mother on placing her children at school--Mehemet Ali--Mrs. Jameson's opinion on publishers and publishing--Her opinion of my Indian legends--False report of a new Indian language--Indian compound words--Delafield's Antiquities--American Fur Company--State of Indian disturbances in Texas and Florida--Causes of the failure of the war in Florida, by an officer--Death of an Indian chief--Mr. Bancroft's opinion on the Dighton Rock inscription--Skroellings not in New England--Mr. Gallatin's opinion on points of Esquimaux language, connected with our knowledge of our archaeology.
1839. Jan. 1st. I called, amid the throng, on the President. His manners were bland and conciliatory. These visits, on set days, are not without the sentiment of strong personality in many of the visitors, but what gives them their most significant character is the general loyalty they evince to the constitution, and government, and supreme law of the land. The President is regarded, for the time, as the embodiment of this sentiment, and the tacit fealty paid to him, as the supreme law officer, is far more elevating to the self-balanced and independent mind than if he were a monarch ad libitum, and not for four years merely.
2d. I received a notice of my election as a member of the Royal Northern Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, of which fact I had been previously notified by that Society. This Society shows us how the art of engraving may be brought in as an auxiliary to antiquarian letters; but it certainly undervalues American sagacity if it conjectures that such researches and speculations as those of Mr. Magnusen, on the Dighton Rock, and what it is fashionable now-a-days to call the NEWPORT RUIN, can satisfy the purposes of a sound investigation of the Anti-Columbian period of American history.
There was a perfect jam this evening at Blair's. What sort of a compliment is it to be one of five or six hundred people, not half of whom can be squeezed into a small house, and not one of whom can pretend to taste a morsel without the danger of having server and all jammed down his throat.
3d. The mail hunts up everybody. Go where you will, and particularly to the seat of government, and letters will follow you. Whoever is in the service of government bears a part of the functions of it, though it be but an infinitesimal part. Mr. H. Conner, the Saginaw sub-agent, in a letter of this date, reports the Saginaws at one thousand four hundred and forty-three souls, and the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewas at one hundred and ninety-eight. One of the most singular facts in the statistics of the most of the frontier Indian tribes of the Lakes, is, in the long run, that they neither increase nor decline, but just keep up a sort of dying existence.
4th. Dr. Thomas H. Webb, Secretary of the Rhode Island Historical Society, announces the plan of that Society in publishing a series of works illustrating, in the first place, the history and language of the Indians, and soliciting me to become a contributor of original observations. The difficulty in all true efforts of our literary history is the want of means. A man must devote all his leisure in researches, and then finds that there is no way in which these labors can be made to aid in supplying him the means of subsistence. He must throw away his time, and yet buy his bread. There is no real taste for letters in a people who will not pay for them. It is too early in our history, perhaps, to patronize them as a general thing. Making and inventing new ploughs will pay, but not books.
9th. The Secretary of War confirms my leave of absence, to visit Europe, and extends it beyond the contingencies of a re-appointment, on the 4th of March next.
10th. Attended a general and crowded party at Gen. Macomb's, in the evening, with Mrs. Schoolcraft. The General has always appeared to me a perfect amateur in military science, although he has distinguished himself in the field. He is a most polished and easy man in all positions in society, and there is an air and manner by which he constantly reveals his French blood. He has a keen perception of the ridiculous, and a nice appreciation of the mock gravity of the heroic in character, and related to me a very effective scene of this latter kind, which occurred at Mr. John Johnston's, at St. Mary's Falls, on the close of the late war. He had visited that place in perhaps 1815 or 1816, as military commander of the District of Michigan, in the suite of Major-Gen. Brown. They were guests of Mr. Johnston. In going up the river to see Gros Cape, at the foot of Lake Superior, the American party had been fired upon by the Chippewas, who were yet hostile in feeling. When the party returned to the house of Mr. Johnston, their host, the latter drew himself up in the spirit of the border times of Waverley, and, with the air and accent of a chief of those days--which, by the way, was not altogether unnatural to him--manifested the high gentlemanly indignation of a host whose hospitality had been violated. He exclaimed to his eldest son, "Let our followers be ready to repel this gross affront." The General's eye danced in telling it. The thing of the firing had been done--nobody was hurt--nobody was in fact in hostile array; and far less was the party itself alarmed. It had been some crack-brained Indian, I believe Sassaba, who yet smarted at the remembrance of the death of his brother, who was killed with Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames.
11th. Left Washington, with my family, in the cars for Baltimore, where we lodged; reached Philadelphia the next day, at four P.M.; remained the 13th and 14th, and reached New York on the 16th, at 4 o'clock P.M.
14th. Mrs. Schoolcraft, having left her children at school, at Philadelphia and Princeton, remained pensive, and wrote the following lines in the Indian tongue, on parting from them, which. I thought so just that I made a translation of them.
Nyau nin de nain dum May kow e yaun in Ain dah nuk ki yaun Waus sa wa kom eg Ain dah nuk ki yaun
Ne dau nig ainse e Ne gwis is ainse e Ishe nau gun ug wau Waus sa wa kom eg
She gwau go sha ween Ba sho waud e we Nin zhe ka we yea Ishe ez hau jau yaun Ain dah nuk ke yaun
Ain dah nuk ke yaun Nin zhe ke we yea Ishe ke way aun e Nyau ne gush kain dum
[FREE TRANSLATION.]
Ah! when thought reverts to my country so dear, My heart fills with pleasure, and throbs with a fear: My country, my country, my own native land, So lovely in aspect, in features so grand, Far, far in the West. What are cities to me, Oh! land of my mother, compared unto thee?
Fair land of the lakes! thou are blest to my sight, With thy beaming bright waters, and landscapes of light; The breeze and the murmur, the dash and the roar, That summer and autumn cast over the shore, They spring to my thoughts, like the lullaby tongue, That soothed me to slumber when youthful and young.
One feeling more strongly still binds me to thee, There roved my forefathers, in liberty free-- There shook they the war lance, and sported the plume, Ere Europe had cast o'er this country a gloom; Nor thought they that kingdoms more happy could be, White lords of a land so resplendent and free.
Yet it is not alone that my country is fair, And my home and my friends are inviting me there; While they beckon me onward, my heart is still here, With my sweet lovely daughter, and bonny boy dear: And oh! what's the joy that a home can impart, Removed from the dear ones who cling to my heart.
It is learning that calls them; but tell me, can schools Repay for my love, or give nature new rules? They may teach them the lore of the wit and the sage, To be grave in their youth, and be gay in their age; But ah! my poor heart, what are schools to thy view, While severed from children thou lovest so true!
I return to my country, I haste on my way, For duty commands me, and duty must sway; Yet I leave the bright land where my little ones dwell, With a sober regret, and a bitter farewell; For there I must leave the dear jewels I love, The dearest of gifts from my Master above.
NEW YORK, March 18th, 1839.
17th. Went, in the evening, to hear Mr. Stephens, the celebrated traveler, lecture before the Historical Society, at the Stuyvesant Institute, on Mehemet Ali. Public opinion places lecturers sometimes in a false position. An attempt was here made to make out Mehemet Ali a great personage, exercising much influence in his times. An old despotic rajah in a tea-pot! Who looks to him for exaltation of sentiment, liberality and enlargement of views, or as an exemplar of political truth? Mr. Stephens, however, knew the feeling and expectation of his audience, and drew a picture, which was eloquently done, and well received. This popular mode of lecturing is certainly better than the run-a-muck amusements of the day. But it panders to an excited intellectual appetite, and is anything but philosophical, historical, or strictly just.
18th. I received instructions from Washington, to form a treaty with the Saginaws, for the cession of a tract of ground on which to build a light-house on Saginaw Bay.
The next letter I opened was from Mrs. Jameson, of London, who writes that her plan of publication is, to divide the profits with her publishers, and, as these are honest men and gentlemen, she has found that the best way. She advises me to adopt the same course with respect to my Indian legends.[91]
[Footnote 91: I followed this advice, but fell into the hands of the Philistines.]
"I published," she says, "in my little journal, one or two legends which Mrs. Schoolcraft gave me, and they have excited very general interest. The more exactly you can (in translation) adhere to the style of the language of the Indian nations, instead of emulating a fine or correct English style--the more characteristic in all respects--the more original--the more interesting your work will be."
21st. I read the following article in the New York Herald:--
NEW INDIAN TRIBE.--Dr. Jackson, in his report of the geology of the public lands, states that at the mouth of the Tobique there is an Indian settlement, where a large tribe of Indians reside, and gain a livelihood by trapping the otter and beaver. These Indians are quite distinct from the Penobscot tribe, and speak a peculiar language.
Query. What is the name of this tribe? what language do they speak? and what evidence is there that they are not Souriquois or Miemacks, who have been known to us since the first settlement of Acadia and Nova Scotia?
Indian compound words are very composite. Aco, in the names of places once occupied by Algonquin bands, means, a limit, or as far as, and is intended to designate the boundary or reach of woods and waters. Ac-ow means length of area. Accomac appears to mean, at the place of the trees, or, as far as the open lands extend to the woods: mac, in this word, may be either a derivative from acké, earth, or, more probably, auk, a generic participle for tree or trunk.
21st. The editor of the North American Review directs my attention to Delafield's Antiquities as the subject of a notice for his pages. Delafield appears to have undertaken a course of reading on Mexican antiquities. The result is given in this work, with his conjectures and speculations on the origin of the race. The cause of antiquarian knowledge is indebted to him for the first publication of the pictorial Aztec map of Butturini.
24th. Called on Mr. Ramsey Crooks, president of the American Fur Company, at his counting-house, in Ann street. He gave me an interesting sketch of his late tour from La Pointe, Lake Superior, to the Mississippi. The Chippewas were not paid at La Pointe till October. This made him late at the country. The St. Croix River froze before he reached the Mississippi, and he went down the latter, from St. Peter's, in a sleigh. Bonga had been sent to notify the Milles Lacs, Sandy Lake, and Leoch Lake Indians to come to the payments. When he reached Leech Lake, Guelle Plat had gone, with twenty-four canoes, to open a trade with the Hudson's Bay Factor, at Rainy Lake. Mr. Crooks thinks that the dissatisfaction among these bands can be readily allayed by judicious measures. Thinks the Governor of Wisconsin ought to call the chiefs together at some central point within the country, and make explanations. That the payments, in future, should be made at one place, and not divided. That the Leech Lake, and other bands living without the ceded district, ought not to participate in the annuities.
Mr. Crook's manner is always prompt and cordial. He concentrates, in his reminiscences, the history of the fur trade in America for the last forty years. I have always thought it a subject of regret, that such a man should not have kept a journal. There was much, it is true, that could not be put down, and he was always so exclusively an active business man that mere literary memoranda never attracted his attention; they were not adverse to his tastes. He has nearly, I should judge, recovered from the severe hardships and privations which attended his perilous journey across the Rocky Mountains, on the abandonment of Astoria, on the Pacific, in 1812.
29th. Texas and Florida continue to be the rallying points of Indian warfare. The frontier of Texas is harassed by wandering parties of Indians. A Mr. Morgan, who resided near the falls of Brazos, had been killed, and three women carried off by a band of fifteen savages. A company of rangers was sent in pursuit.
The Florida War still lingers, without decisive results. The New Orleans Bee says that General Taylor has been very active, the past season, in trying to bring it to a close. A writer from Tampa Bay, of the 25th instant, who appears to have good knowledge of matters, states three causes, particularly as opposing a successful prosecution and consummation of it, namely:--
"1st. An ignorance of the topography of Florida--the position of the numerous swamps and hummocks, the usual hiding-places of the Indians.
"2d. A want of proper interpreters.
"3d. A countervailing influence from some unknown quarter."
He supports his view as follows: "It is a well known fact that, previous to the year 1836, the portion of Florida south of the Military Road from Tampa to Garey's Ferry was unexplored and unknown, and since that time the only information has been derived from the hasty reconnoissances of officers, made in the progress of the several divisions of the army through the country. Since the organization of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, several have been sent to this country, and are now actively engaged in making surveys and plotting maps. Could the information they are expected to give have been known even before the commencement of the last campaign, it would have aided materially in the subjugation of the enemy. A correct knowledge of this country is needed more especially because such another theatre of war probably has not a place on the earth; a theatre so peculiarly favorable to the Indians and disadvantageous to the white man. Swamps may be delineated as well perhaps as any other natural object; but such swamps as are found in Florida, are not to be imitated in painting or described by words. As an instance, I may mention the Halpataokee or Alligator Water, which is made up of small islands, surrounded by water of various depths, through which for two miles the road of the army passed during the winter of 1838."
"2d. The only Interpreters are Seminole negroes, who, for the most part, find it difficult to understand English. As an instance of the numerous mistakes occurring daily, may be mentioned the following: The General told the interpreter to say to Nettetok Emathla, that 'patience and perseverance would accomplish everything.' While he was speaking to the Indian, the remark was made that he did not know the meaning of the sentence. When questioned the following day, he said 'patience and 'suverance mean a little book,' Our laughter convinced him he was mistaken, and he said 'patience mean you must be patien; I don't zackly know what 'suverance do mean, sar!' Numerous errors of this nature are doubtless occurring daily, and among a people who are so scrupulously nice and formal in their 'talks,' such trifling mistakes may be injurious.
"3d. We are now to speak of the most important difficulty in the way of termination of hostilities, and the removal of the Seminoles to their new homes beyond the 'Muddy Water.' That the Indians are and have been supplied by whites, Americans or Spaniards, is a point so decisively settled that 'no hinge is left whereon to hang a doubt.' However shameless it may appear, proofs are not wanting to establish the fact, so much to the discredit of our patriotism. When Coacoochee escaped from St. Augustine he carried with him bolts of calico and factory cloths, which he afterwards sold to the Indians in the woods for three chalks (six shillings) per yard. It was reported to Colonel Taylor, then at Fort Bassinger, by an Indian woman, who ran away from Coacoochee's camp, that he had one poney packed solely with powder; that he had plenty of lead, provisions, etc., and was determined never to come in or go to Arkansas. On several occasions when Indians have been killed or taken, or their camps surprised, new calico, fresh tobacco, bank bills, and other articles of a civilized character, have been found in their possession. Besides, this, the Indians are constantly reporting in their talks that some persons on the other side of the territory prevent the hostiles from complying with the treaty. Ethlo Emathla, Governor of the Tallahassees, promised the general to be in with his people on a specified day. It is reduced almost to a certainty that he has been prevented from doing so by the representations of some person or persons in a quarter, the name of which charity alone forbids to mention. The only object is, and for a long time has been, to keep entirely out of the way, to hide themselves from the whites, and every effort to bring them to battle, either by sending small or large parties among them, has proved useless. They will not fight, and thirty thousand men cannot find them, broken up as they are into small parties. What then is to be done? Protect the inhabitants of the frontiers, gradually push the Indians south, and at no distant day, the necessary, unavoidable and melancholy consummation must arrive, viz., the expulsion of the last tribe of red men from the soil over which they once roamed the sole lords and possessors."
30th. The oldest man in the Ottawa nation, a chief called Nish-caud-jin-in-a, or the Man of Wrath, died this day at L'Arbre Croche, Michigan. He was between ninety and one hundred years of age, withered and dry, and slightly bent, but still preserving the outlines of a man of strength, good figure, and intellect. What a mass of reminiscences and elements of history dies with every old person of observation, white or red.
Feb. 4th. Mr. James H. Lanman writes respecting the prospects of his publishing a history of Michigan--a subject which I gave him every encouragement to go forward in, while he lived in that State. The theme is an ambitious one, involving as it does the French era of settlements, and the day for handling it effectively has not yet arrived. But the sketches that may be made from easily-got, existing materials, may subserve a useful purpose, with the hope always that some new fact may be elicited, which will add to the mass of materials. "I have been delayed here," he says, "in preparing the book, and the delay has been occasioned by my publishers having failed. It is now, however, stereotyped, and will be out in about a fortnight." [92]
[Footnote 92: He afterwards re-cast the work, and it was published by the Harpers as one of the volumes of their library.]
21st. Mr. Bancroft writes to me, giving every encouragement to bring forward before the public my collections and researches on Indian history and language, and expressing his opinion of success, unless I should be "cursed with a bad publisher."
"Father Duponceau," he says, "won his prize out of your books, and Gallatin owes much to you. Go on; persevere; build a monument to yourself and the unhappy Algonquin race."
Making every allowance for Mr. Bancroft's enthusiastic way of speaking, it yet appears to me that I should endeavor to publish the results of investigations of Indian subjects. My connection with the Johnston family has thrown open to me the whole arcanum of the Indian's thoughts.
I wrote an article for Dr. Absalom Peter's Magazine, expressing my dissent from the very fanciful explanations of the Dighton Rock characters, as given by Mr. Magrusen in the first volume of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians, published at Copenhagen. It appears to me that those characters (throwing out two or three) are the Indian Kekéwin--a species of hieroglyphics or symbolic devices, still in vogue among them. To this view of the matter Mr. Bancroft assents. "If you have a proof-sheet of your article on the Daneschrift, send it me. All they say about the Dighton Rock is, I think, the sublime of humbuggery."
What is said in the interpreted Sagas, of the Skroellings or Esquimaux being in New England at the date of Eric's voyage (A. D. 1001) is, I think, problematical. Those tribes are not known to have extended further south than the Straits of Belleisle, about 60°, or to parts of Newfoundland. The term deduced from the old journals appear to belong to the Esquimaux proper, rather than to the New England class of the Algonquins. The Esquimaux had the free use of the sound of the letter l, which was not used at all by the N.E. Indians.
Mr. Gallatin, in a letter of Feb. 22, in response to me on this subject, says: "The letter L occurs in every Esquimaux dialect of which I have any knowledge. Thus heaven or sky, is in Greenland, Killak; Hudson's Bay, Keiluk; Kadick Islands, Kelisk; Kotzebue's Sound, Keilyak; Asiatic Tshuktchi, Kuelok.
"I am not so certain about the v, which I find used only by Egede, or Crantz (not distinguished from each other in my collection) for the Greenland dialect. In their conjurations I find 'we (sing. and dual) wash them' Ernikp-auvut, and Ernikp-auvuk. In the Mithradites, the same letter v is repeatedly used in dual examples of the Greenland and Labrador dialects, principally (as it appears to me) but not exclusively in the pronominal terminations, picksaukonik, akeetvor, tivut, Profetiv-vit! that is, good ours, debtors ours, a prophet art thou.
"By comparing this with the pronouns of the other Esquimaux dialects, I suspect that oo and w in these, are used instead of v. But the difference may arise from that in the mother tongue, or in the delicacy of the ear, of those who have supplied us with other verbal and pronominal forms or vocabularies."
22d, The Indian names may be studied analytically.
Ches (pronounced by the Algonquin Indians Chees), signifies a plant of the turnip family. Beeg is the plural, and denotes water existing in large bodies, such as accumulations in the form of lakes and seas. If these two roots be connected by the usual sound in Algonquin words, thus Ches-a-beeg, a sound much resembling Chesapeake would be produced. The Nanticokes, who inhabited this bay on its discovery, were of the Algonquin stock.
Potomac appears to be a clipped expression, derived, I believe, from Po-to-wau-me-ac. Po-to-wau, as we have it, in Potawattomie, means to make a fire in a place where fires, such as council fires, are usually made. The ac in the word is apparently from ak or wak, a standing tree. The whole appears descriptive of a burning tree, or a burning forest.
Megiddo in the Algonquin means he barks, or a barker. Hence me-giz-ze, an eagle or the bird that barks.
Chapter LXVII
Workings of unshackled mind--Comity of the American Addison--Lake periodical fluctuations--American antiquities--Indian doings in Florida and Texas--Wood's New England's Prospect--Philological and historical comments--Death of Ningwegon--Creeks--Brothertons made citizens--Charles Fenno Hoffman--Indian names for places on the Hudson--Christian Indians--Etymology--Theodoric--Appraisements of Indian property--Algic researches--Plan and object.
1839. Feb. 22d. Hon. Lucius Lyon, Senator in Congress from Michigan, writes, informing me of the movements of political affairs in that State. The working of our system in the new States is peculiar. Popular opinion must have its full swing. It rights itself. Natural good sense and sound moral appreciation of right are at work at the bottom, and the lamp of knowledge is continually replenished with oil, by schools and teaching. That light cannot be put out. It will burn on till the world is not only free, but enlightened and renovated.
24th. Washington Irving kindly encloses me a letter to Colonel Aspinwall of London, commending to him my contemplated publication on the oral legends of the North American Indians. "I regret to say," he adds, "that the last time he wrote to me, he was in great uneasiness, apprehending the loss of one of his daughters, who appeared to be in a rapid decline."
25th. Mrs. Jameson, on returning from her trip to the lakes, writes for my opinion on the causes of the phenomenon of the rise in the waters of the lakes. Alluding to this subject, the Superintendent of the works in the Ohio says: "The water of Lake Erie, which has been rising for many years, and has attained a height unequaled in the memory of man, seems to have attained its maximum, and to have commenced its reflux. Since the first day of June last, as I have ascertained by means of graduated rods at different points along the coast of Lake Erie, the water has fallen perpendicularly nineteen inches, and is still falling. The meteorological character of the present season, as compared with that of several previous seasons, clearly shows the cause of the rise and fall of the lakes not to be periodical, as has heretofore been asserted, but entirely accidental. For several years the summers have been cloudy and cold, with a prevalence of easterly winds and rainy weather. The last summer has been excessively warm for the whole season, and of exceeding drought. When it is remembered that the amount of water evaporated over the surface of these vast bodies of water, during a period of warm sunny weather, greatly exceeds that which passes the outlet of one of these lakes (Niagara River, for example), the cause of the phenomenon is apparent."--See Mr. Barrett's inquiries, ante.
26th. The New York Star publishes a notice of Delafield's Antiquities. This handsomely printed and illustrated work contains four things that are new to the antiquarian inquirer: 1. A theory by the author, by which he conceives the Indian race to be descended from the ancient Cuthites, who are Hamitic. This is wrong. 2. A curious and valuable pictographic map of the migration of the Aztecs, not heretofore printed. This is an acquisition. 3. A disquisition of Dr. Lakey, of Cincinnati, on the superiority of the northern to the southern race of red men. This seems true. 4. A preface, by Bishop McIlvaine, showing the importance in all inquiries of the kind, of keeping the record of the Bible strictly in view. This is right.
27th. The Houston Telegraph of this date gays: "A party of about eighty men from Bastrop County, accompanied by Castro and forty Lipan warriors, recently made an expedition into the Comanche country, and, near the San Saba, attacked and routed a large body of Comanches, who, with their women and children, were encamped on a small branch of the stream. About thirty of the Comanche warriors were killed in the engagement, many huts and considerable baggage destroyed, and a large number of horses and mules captured. On their return, however, a few Comanches stole silently into the droves of horses, while feeding at night, and recaptured the whole except ninety-three horses, which the shrewd Castro, with ten of his warriors, had driven far in advance of the main company, and which he subsequently brought in safety to Lagrange. Only two of the citizens of Texas were injured on this expedition."
"General Burlison, at the head of about seventy men, recently encountered a large body of Indians on the Brushy, and, after one or two skirmishes, finding the enemy numerous, retreated to a ravine in order to engage them with more advantage; but the Indians, fearing to attack him in his new position, drew off and retreated into a neighboring thicket. Being unable to pursue them, he returned to Bastrop. It is reported that he has lost three men in this engagement; the loss of the Indians is not known; it, however, must have been considerable, as most of the men under Burlison were excellent marksmen, and had often been engaged in Indian warfare."
March 4th. The N. Y. Evening Post says, that a gentleman from Tallahassee, just arrived at Washington, states that murders by the Indians are of everyday occurrence in that vicinity, and that between the 17th and 21st Feb. fifteen persons had been killed.
5th. Finished the perusal of William Wood's "New England's Prospects," a work of 98 12mo pages, printed at London, 1634. This was fourteen years after the first landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth, and the same year that John Eliot came over. Its chief claim to notice is its antiquity. "Some have thought," he says, "that they (the Indians) might be descendants of the Jews, because some of their words be near unto the Hebrew; but by the same rule they may conclude them to be some of the gleanings of all nations, because they have words which sound after the Greek, Latin, French, and other tongues. Their language is hard to learn, few of the English being able to speak any of it, or capable of the right pronunciation, which is the chief grace of their tongue. They pronounce much after the diphthongs, excluding B and L, which, in our English tongue, they pronounce with much difficulty, as most of the Dutch do T and H, calling a lobster, a nobstan."
The examples of a vocabulary he gives show them to be Algonquins, and not "Skroellings," or Esquimaux, as they are represented to have been by the Scandinavians (vide Ant. Amer.), who visited the present area of Massachusetts in the tenth century.
The close alliance of their language with the existing Chippewa and Ottawa of the north, is shown by the following specimens:--
New England Tribes. Chippewa of Lake Superior. 1634. 1839. Woman, Squa, E-qua. Water, Nip-pe, Ne-bé. A raccoon, Au-supp, A se-bun. Daughter, Tawonis, O-dau-nis. A duck, Sea-sceep, She-sheeb. Summer, Se-quan, Se-gwun. Red Squi, Mis-qui. A house, Wig-wam, Weeg-wam.
He divides the tribes into:--
Tarrenteens. Churhers (local tribes even then under instruction). Aberginians (Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, probably). Narragansetts (a tribe of the N.E. Algonquins with dialectic peculiarities). Pequants (" " ") Nepnets (" " ") Connectacuts (" " ") Mohawks (a tribe of Iroquois).
The people whom he calls "Tarrenteens," are clearly Abenakies.
Cotton Mather, L. of E., 1691, p. 78, denominates the Indians "the veriest ruins of mankind. Their name for an Englishman was a knifeman; stone was used instead of metal for their tools; and for their coins they have only little beads, with holes in them, to string them upon a bracelet, whereof some are white, and of these there go six for a penny; some are black or blue, and of these go three for a penny; this wampum, as they call it, is made of shell fish, which lies upon the sea-coast continually."
P. 79. "Nokehick, that is, a spoonful of parched meal with a spoonful of water, which will strengthen them to travel a day."
"Reading and writing are altogether unknown to them, though there is a stone or two in the country that has unaccountable characters engraved upon it."
The intention of the King in granting the royal charter to Massachusetts was, says Cotton Mather:--
"To win and invite the natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind, and the Christian faith, is our Royal intentions, and the adventurer's free profession is the principal end of the plantation."--Life of Eliot, p. 77.
10th. Died at Little Traverse Bay, on Lake Michigan, Ningwegon, or the Wing, the well-known American-Ottawa chief--a man who distinguished himself for the American cause at Detroit, in 1812, and was thrown into prison by the British officers for his boldness in expressing his sentiments. He received a life annuity under the treaty of 28th March, 1836.
11th. Received notice of my election as a corresponding member of the Brooklyn Lyceum.
12th. A small party of chiefs of the Seneca tribe under the command of "Blacksmith," successor to Red Jacket, arrived in this city yesterday from Washington, and took lodgings at the Western Hotel in Courtland Street. They were received by the Mayor at the Governor's room about 12 o'clock. In the address made by one of the number, it was stated that the object of their visit had been to urge upon the President the impropriety of driving them from their present possessions.
13th, PEACE AMONG THE INDIANS.--The two nations of Upper and Lower Creeks, who were hostile while residing east of the Mississippi, have, in their new homes in Arkansas, united in general council, at which fifteen hundred were present. The oratory on this occasion, of smoking the calumet, is described as of the highest order.
14th. Judge Bronson, of Florida, last evening, at a party at his cousin's (Arthur Bronson, 46 Bond Street, N. Y.), states that, as Chairman of a Committee in Congress, a few years ago, he had reported a bill for allowing the Brotherton Indians to hold their property in Wisconsin individually, and to enjoy the rights of citizenship; and that this bill passed both houses.
20th. Went to dine with Charles Fenno Hoffman, at his lodgings in Houston Street. Found his room garnished with curiosities of various sorts, indicative, among other things, of his interest in the Indian race. A poet in his garret I had long heard of, but a liberal gentlemanly fellow, surrounded by all the elegances of life, I had not thought of as the domicil of the Muses. Mr. Hoffman impressed me as being very English in his appearance and manners. His forehead is quite Byronic in its craniological developments. His eye and countenance are of the most commanding character. Pity that such a handsome man, so active in everything that calls for the gun, the rod, the boat, the horse, the dog, should have been shorn of so essential a prerequisite as a leg. His conversational powers are quite extraordinary. I felt constantly as if I were in the presence of a lover of nature and natural things; a bon vivant perhaps, or an epicure, a Tom Moore, in some sense, whose day-dreams of heaven are mixed up with glowing images of women and wine.
27th. I was directed from Washington to relieve the principal disbursing officer at Detroit. Here then my hopes of visiting Europe are blown sky high for the present. I must return to the north, and, so far as labor is concerned, "heap Pelion on Ossa."
April 6th. There is hardly a word in the Indian languages which does not readily yield to the power of analysis. They call tobacco, Ussama. Ussa, means to put (anything inanimate). Ma, is a particle denoting smell. The us, in the first syllable, is sounded very slight, and often, perhaps, nearly dropt, and the word then seems as if spelt Sa ma. The last vowel is broad.
8th. Left the city for Detroit. In ascending the Hudson, with so good an interpreter at my side as Mrs. Schoolcraft, whom I have carried through a perfect course of philological training in the English, Latin, and Hebrew principles of formation, I analyzed many of the old Indian names, which, until we reached Albany, are all in a peculiar dialect of the Algonquin.
SING SING.--This name is the local form of the name for rocks, and conveys the idea of the plural in the terminal letter. Os-sin in modern Algonquin (the Chippewa dialect), is stone, or rock. Ing, is the local form of all nouns proper. The term may be rendered simply place of rocks.
NYAC.--This appears to be the name of a band of Indians who lived there. The termination in ac, is generally from acke, land.
CROTON.--Historically, this is known to have been the name of a noted Indian chief, who resided near the mouth of the river. The word appears to be derived from nötin, a wind. If we admit the interchange of sounds of n for r, as being made, and the ordinary change of t for d, between the Holland and Indian races, this derivation is probable. The letter c seems to be the sign of a pronoun.
TAPPAN SEA.--It is perceived from Vanderdonk, and from old maps and records, that a band of Indians lived here, who were called the "Tappansees."
POUGHKEEPSIE is a derivative of Au-po-keep-sing, i.e., Place of shelter. The entrance of the Fall Kill into the Hudson is the feature meant.
COXACKIE, is evidently made up in the original from kuk, to cut, and aukie, earth, which was, probably, in old days, as it is in fact yet, a graphic description of a ridge cut and tumbled in by the waters of the Hudson pressing hard on that shore.
CLAVERACK is not Indian. Clove, in the Hollandais, is an opening or side-gorge in the valley. Rack, is a reach or bend in the river, the whole length of which was known, as we see, to the old skippers as separate racks. The reach of cloves began at what is now the city of Hudson, the old Claverack landing.
TAWASENTHA.--Normanskill is the first Iroquois name noticed. It means the hill of the dead. Albany itself has taken the name of a Scottish dukedom for its ancient Iroquois cognomen, Ske-nek-ta-dea: of this compound term, Ske is a propositional particle, and means beyond; nek is the Mohawk name for a pine; and the term ta-dea is descriptive of a valley.
18th. Reached Detroit in the steamer "Gen. Wayne," and assumed the duties of my new appointment. One of the earliest Washington papers I opened, gave an account of the death of Mr. William Ward, a most valuable clerk in the Indian Bureau; a man of a fine literary taste, who formerly edited and established the North-west Journal, at the City of Detroit.
19th. A singular denouement is made this morning, which appeals strongly to my feelings. On getting in the stage at Vernon, in Western New York, a gentleman of easy manners, good figure, and polite address, whom we will call Theodoric, kindly made way for me and my family, which led us to notice him, and we traveled together quite to Detroit, and put up at the same hotel. This morning a note from him reveals him to be a young Virginian, seeking his fortune west, and out of funds, and makes precisely such an appeal as it is hard, and wrong in fact, to resist. I told Theodoric to take his trunk and go, by the next steamer, to my house at Mackinack, and I should be up in a short time, and furnish him employment in the Indian department.
25th. Rev. Mr. Lukenbach, of the Moravian towns, Canada, writes, that the proportional annuity of the Christian Indians, for 1838, is unpaid. He says they were paid 33/100ths, in 1837, being one-third of the original annuity. He states that Mr. Vogler and Mr. Mickeh arrived on the Kanzas with upwards of seventy souls, having left nearly one hundred at Green Bay, who are to follow them; and that these two men have commenced a new mission among the Delawares. Mr. L. says that there are but about one hundred and twenty souls left, who propose to remain in Canada with him.
30th. Ke-bic! An exclamation of the Algonquins in passing dangerous rocky shores in their canoes, when the current is strong. Query. Is not this the origin of the name Quebec?
May 2d. Major Garland, my predecessor in the disbursements, writes from Washington: "You have a heavy task on your hands for this season; and, in addition to the hands of Briareus, you will need the eyes of Argus."
3d. I made the payments to the Saginaw chiefs in specie, under the treaty of the 14th of January, 1837.
10th. Mr. F.W. Shearman, the able and ingenious editor of the Journal of Education, writes from Marshall, that it receives an increased circulation and excites a deeper interest in the people, with his plans for further improvements.
16th. Letters from Mackinack informs me that the Ottawas design leaving their location in the United States for the Manitouline Islands, in Canada, where inducements are held out to them by agents of the British government. They fear going west: they cling to the north.
20th. The Harpers, publishers at New York, send me copies of the first issue of my Algic Researches, in two vols., 12mo. They intend to publish the work on the 1st proximo.
23d. Letters from Washington speak of the treasury as being low in specie funds.
24th. Sales of the lands of the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewas, are made at the Land Office in Detroit, in conformity with the treaty of May 9th, 1836. The three years that have elapsed in this operation, have brought the prices of lands from the summer heat to the zero of prices.
27th. Na, in the Algonquin language, means excellent or transcendent, and wa, motion. Thus the names of two chiefs who visited me to day on business, are Na-geezhig, excellent or transcendent day, and Ke-wa-geezhig, or returning cloud. Whether the word geezhig shall be rendered day, or cloud, or sky, depends on the nature of its prefix. To move back is ke-wa, and hence the prefixed term to the latter name.
June 4th. Received from Col. De Garme Jones, Mayor of Detroit, sundry manuscript documents relative to the administration of Indian affairs of Gov. Hull, of the dates of 1807, '8 and '9.
Mr. Johnstone, of Aloor, near Edinburgh, Scotland, brings me a note of introduction from Gen. James Talmadge, of New York. Mr. J. is a highly respected man at home, and is traveling in America to gratify a laudable curiosity.
7th. Reached Mackinack, on board the steamer Great Western, Capt. Walker.
10th. The Albany Evening Journal has a short editorial under the head of Algic Researches: "Such is the title of a work from our countryman Schoolcraft, which the Harpers have just published, in two volumes. It consists of Tales and Legends, which the Author has gleaned in the course of his long and familiar intercourse with the children of the Forest, illustrating the mental powers and characteristics of the North American Indians.
"Mr. Schoolcraft has traveled far into the western wilds. He has lived much with the Indians, and has studied their character thoroughly. He is withal a scholar and a gentleman, whose name is a sufficient guarantee for the excellence of all he writes."
11th. I set out to complete the appraisement of the Indian improvements on the north shore of Lake Huron, under the 8th article of the treaty of March 28th, 1836.
12th. Paid the Indians of L'Arbre Croche villages at Little Traverse Bay, the amount of the appraisement of their public improvements, made under the treaty of 1836.
13th. Proceed to Grand Traverse Bay, to view the location of a mission by Messrs. Dougherty and Fleming. Found it located on the sands, near the bottom of the bay, where a vessel could not unload, at a point so utterly destitute of advantages that it would not have been possible to select a worse site in the compass of the whole bay, which is large, and abounds in ship harbors. Condemned the site forthwith, and the same day removed the site of operations to Kosa's village, on a bay near the end of the peninsula. I afterwards encamped on the open lake shore, behind a sand drift, to avoid the force of the wind, and, as soon as the waters of the lake lulled, made the traverse to the Beaver Islands, to appraise the value of the Indian improvements at that place, and, having done this, put across to the main shore north, for the same purpose. In this trip Mr. Turner accompanied me to keep the lists, and Dr. Douglass to vaccine the Indians, the latter of whom reported 214 persons as having submitted to receive the virus.
The Albany papers continue to publish notices of Algic Researches. The Argus of the 13th June, says: "Mr. H.R. Schoolcraft has added another to his claims upon the consideration of the reading public, by a recent work (from the press of the Messrs. Harper), entitled 'Algic Researches, comprising inquiries respecting the mental characteristics of the North American Indians.' It is the first of a series, which the author promises to continue at a future day, illustrative of the mythology, distinctive opinions, and intellectual character of the aborigines. These volumes comprise their oral tales, with preliminary observations and a general introduction. The term Algic, is introduced by the author, in a generic sense, for all the tribes, with few exceptions, that were found in 1600 spread out between the Atlantic and the Mississippi.
"To those who care to look into the philosophy of the Indian character, these oral fictions will be read with interest. They are curious in themselves, and not less so as a material step in the researches that may serve, in the sequel, to unveil the origin, as well as the intellectual traits, of these tribes. They will at least establish the fact of 'an oral imaginative lore' among the aborigines of this continent, of which they give us faithful specimens.
"Probably no man in this country is better qualified to pursue these researches than Mr. Schoolcraft. A long residence in the Indian country, and official intercourse with the tribes, have given him an access to the Indian mind which few have enjoyed, and which none have improved to a greater extent by habits of observation and philosophical investigation. A residence at Mackinaw is of itself calculated to beget, as it is to gratify, a taste for the prosecution of these inquiries. It is described by Miss Martineau as 'the wildest and tenderest piece of beauty that she had yet seen on God's earth.' It is indeed a spot of rare attractiveness. Standing upon the promontory, in the rear of the fort and town, the view embraces to the north the head waters of the Huron and the far-off isles of St. Martin, to the west Green Isle and the straits of Mackinaw, and to the east and south Bois Blanc and the Great Lake. It is a delightful summer retreat, and many are the legends and reminiscences of the scenes of enjoyment passed here in absolute, and we are assured happy, exclusion from the outward world, during the winter months. It has been regarded, at no distant day, as important not only as the rendezvous of the Fur Companies' agents and employers and the Indian traders, but as a government military post. It is still a great resort of the northern Indians. Often their lodges and their bark canoes, of beautiful construction, line the pebbly shore; and the aboriginal habits and mental characteristics may be studied on the spot.
"It is to be hoped that Mr. S. will resume the course of inquiry and research that he has marked out for himself; and that he will be induced to give to the public the results of his long and intimate familiarity with the Indian life and character."
17th. The Detroit Daily Advertiser, of this day, has the following critical notice on the work of Algic Researches, under the head of Indian Tales and Legends.
"This work has just been offered for sale at our book-stores, and we strongly recommend it to all those who feel an interest in the character of our aborigines. It is well known to many of us here, that Mr. Schoolcraft has, for the last several years, been industriously engaged in collecting facts which illustrate the 'mythology, distinctive opinions, and intellectual character' of the Indians. His researches have embraced 'their oral tales, fictitious and historical; their hieroglyphics, music, and poetry; and the grammatical structure of their languages, the principles of their construction, and the actual state of their vocabulary.' The materials he has now on hand afford him the means of fulfilling this extensive plan, and this 'first series' is only a leading publication.
"When the position which Mr. S. has occupied for the last seventeen or more years is recollected, as well as his fitness and exertions to improve all its advantages, we shall at once see the benefit to the literary and scientific world which his researches in these various departments are likely to produce. The subjects which have engaged his attention are regarded with deep interest by the philanthropist, the philologist, the archaeologist, as well as many other liberal inquirers, both in Europe and America, who, amid the scanty facts, cursory observations, and hurried, random conjectures of those who have been favored with a comparatively near view of them, have lamented the want of such deliberate investigations and comparative examinations, continued with sober judgment through a long series of years, as are now offered to the public. We trust that a proper and enlightened patronage will warrant Mr. Schoolcraft in completing his design. No man, possessing his qualifications, has enjoyed his advantages. He has been able to take up, at his leisure, the scattered links of a broken chain, and fit them together. A chaos of aboriginal facts will be reduced, under his hand, to some degree of order.
"Mr. Schoolcraft and Mr. Catlin have done more to preserve the fleeting traits of aboriginal character and history than all their predecessors in this field of inquiry, and none can follow them with the same success, as none can have the same range of subjects before them. The scene is changing with each year, and the past, with respect to the Savages, does not recur. They fall back with no hope to recover lost ground; they diminish with no hope to increase again; they degenerate with no hope to revive in physical or moral strength. Those who have seen them most during the last few years, have seen them best. After observers will find mere fragments, or a heterogeneous mass, in which all original identity is distorted or gone.
"The Tales now published must not be estimated for their intrinsic merit alone. They may have less variety of construction, less beauty of imagination, less singularity of incident, than belong to oriental tales, the productions of more refined times, or more excitable people. But the estimate must not be comparative. They are to be regarded as the type of aboriginal mind, as the measure of intellectual power of our Sons of the Forest; as speaking their sentiments, their hopes and their fears, whatever they were or are, whether elevated or depressed, whether raising the race or sinking it in the scale of untutored nations. Whether they prove a poverty of mental energy, a feebleness of imagination, a want of invention, or the reverse, cannot affect the value of these volumes in the opinion of those who look into them for evidences of the true character of the Indians. Mr. Schoolcraft, or any other gentleman of taste and skill, might have formed out of these materials a series of Tales, highly finished in their unity and design, strikingly colored by fancy, such as would have caught the popular whim. But this was not his object. He has been honest in his renderings of the aboriginal sense, whether pointed or mystical, of the Indian's mythology, whether intelligible or obscure; of their shadowy glimpses of the past and the future; of the beginning and end of things, without alteration or embellishment. Such a work was wanted, and such a work was expected from Mr. Schoolcraft.
"If we have room, we will quote one or two of the shorter tales, such as 'Mon-daw-min, or the origin of Indian corn,' and the 'Celestial Sisters,' both of which are very characteristic, and show, under the garb of much figurative beauty, how Indians appreciate the blessings of a kind Providence, and, how his domestic affections may glow and endure. Indeed, there are few of these tales that would not give interest to our columns, and we shall be pleased to give our readers an occasional taste, provided we thereby induce them to supply themselves with the full feast in their power."
20th. It is stated that the oldest town in the United States is St. Augustine, Florida, by more than forty years. It was founded forty years before Virginia was colonized. Some of the houses are yet standing which are said to have been built more than three centuries ago, that is to say, about 1540. De Soto landed in Florida in 1539. Narvaez, in his unfortunate expedition, landed in 1537. Both these expeditions were confined to the exploration of the country west and north of the Bay of Espiritu Santo, reaching to the Mississippi. De Soto crossed the latter into the southeastern corner of the present State of Missouri, and into the area of Arkansas, where he died.
21st. The Detroit Free Press, of this day, has the following remarks:--
"Much interest is manifested in this work of Mr. Schoolcraft, as a timely rescue from oblivion of an important portion of the great world of mind--important inasmuch as it is a manifestation of two principles of human nature prominent in an interesting variety of the human race, the sense of the marvelous and the sense of the beautiful, or the developments of wonder and ideality. The character of a people cannot be fully understood without a reference to its tales of fiction and its poetry. Poetry is the offspring of the beautiful and the wonderful, and much of it the reader will find embodied in the Indian tales to which the author of the Algic Researches has given an enduring record.
"Much of this work strongly reminds the reader of the Grecian Mythology and the Arabian Nights Entertainments.
"According to one of the Odjibwa tales, the morning star was once a beautiful damsel that longed to go to 'the place of the breaking of daylight." By the following poetic invocation of her brother, she was raised upon the winds, blowing from 'the four corners of the earth,' to the heaven of her hopes:--
Blow winds, blow! my sister lingers From her dwelling in the sky, Where the morn with rosy fingers, Shall her cheeks with vermil dye.
There, my earliest views directed, Shall from her their color take, And her smiles, through clouds reflected, Guide me on, by wood and lake.
"The work abounds with similar beautiful thoughts and inventions.
"Catlin may be called the red man's painter; Schoolcraft his poetical historian. They have each painted in living colors the workings of the Indian mind, and painted nature in her unadorned simplicity. They have done much which, without them, would, perhaps, have remained undone, and become extinct with the Indian race. As monuments of history for future ages, their works are not sufficiently appreciated.
"The author of these volumes has stamped upon his page much of the intellectual existence of the simple children of the forest, and bequeathed us a detail map of their terra incognita--their fireside amusements in legendary lore."
I am willing to notice this and some other criticisms of this work as popular expressions of opinion on the subject. But it is difficult for an editor to judge, from the mere face of the volumes, what an amount of auxiliary labor it has required to collect these legends from the Indian wigwams. They had to be gleaned and translated from time to time. Seventeen years have passed since I first began them--not that anything like this time, or the half of it, has been devoted to it. It was one of my amusements in the long winter evenings--the only time of the year when Indians will tell stories and legends. They required pruning and dressing, like wild vines in a garden. But they are, exclusively (with the exception of the allegory of the vine and oak), wild vines, and not pumpings up of my own fancy. The attempts to lop off excrescences are not, perhaps, always happy. There might, perhaps, have been a fuller adherence to the original language and expressions; but if so, what a world of verbiage must have been retained. The Indians are prolix, and attach value to many minutiae in the relation which not only does not help forward the denouement, but is tedious and witless to the last degree. The gems of the legends--the essential points--the invention and thought-work are all preserved.
Their chief value I have ever thought to consist in the insight they give into the dark cave of the Indian mind--its beliefs, dogmas, and opinions--its secret modes of turning over thought--its real philosophy; and it is for this trait that I believe posterity will sustain the book.
A literary friend, of good judgment, of Detroit, writes (19th): "Your tales have reached me, and I have read them over with a deep interest, arising from a double source--the intrinsic value of such stories and the insight they give of Indian intellect and modes of thought. They form a truly important acquisition to our literary treasures, as they throw a light oft the Indian character which has been imparted from no other quarter. They form a standard by which to determine what is true and what is false in the representations made heretofore of the aboriginal nations on most prominent subjects. No one will doubt that you render the genuine Indian mind and heart. Those who conform to these renderings will pass muster; the rest will be rejected. Let Mr. Cooper and others be thus measured."
24th. Muk-kud-da Ka-niew (or the Black War Eagle), chief of the coasts of Arenac, brought me an antique pipe of peculiar construction, disinterred at Thunder Bay. It was found about six feet underground; and was disclosed by the blowing down of a large pine, which tore up a quantity of earth by its roots. The tree was two fathoms round, and would make a large canoe. With the pipe were found two earthen vases, which broke on taking them up. In these vases were some small bones of the pickerel's spine. He saw also the leg bones of an Indian, but the upper part of the skeleton appeared to be decomposed, and was not visible. He thinks the tree must have grown up on an old grave. The pipe consisted of a squared and ornamented bowl, with a curved and tapering handle, all made solid from a sort of coarse terra cotta. He says it was used by taking the small end in the mouth, and thinks such was the practice of the ancient Indians, although the mode is now so different by their descendants. The chief ornament consists of eight dots on each face, separated by longitudinal strokes, leaving four in a compartment. If the tree was four feet diameter, as he states, it denotes an ancient occupation of the shores of Lake Huron, which was probably of the old era of the mining for copper in Lake Superior.