_Cincinnati, Ohio, April 1835_.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
A few weeks since D. D. Mitchell, Esq., a resident for many years
past, near the falls of Missouri, in the vicinity of the Rocky
Mountains, was in this city, on a visit to his native State, and it
was my good fortune to become personally acquainted with him. He has
been an enterprising and successful adventurer in the American fur
trade, and is now in command of a fort and trading establishment in
the neighborhood of the _Black-feet_, a nation of Indians with whom
the whites have had but little intercourse, and whose peculiar
character and manners we have had few opportunities of knowing.
Besides being a bold and active participator in many of the bloody
conflicts of various tribes, Mr. Mitchell has been a keen observer of
Indian customs, traits, and superstitions; and so great a favorite was
he among the powerful tribe of the Black-feet, that they created him a
chief, with the title of the _Spotted Elk_. Mr. Mitchell did me the
favor whilst here, to submit some of his manuscripts to my inspection.
They contain sketches of the Indian character, and of the country, on
the head waters of Missouri, hitherto almost unexplored by the white
man, and also various interesting anecdotes and observations, highly
creditable to the intelligence, discernment and enterprise of the
writer. I cannot withhold from the patrons of the Literary Messenger,
some share of the pleasure I have myself experienced, in reading these
valuable papers, and, for the present, I send to the publisher, a
remarkable Indian love tale, which Mr. Mitchell, besides his written
testimony, privately assured me was _founded on fact_.--Washington
Irving, in his recent "Tour on the Prairies," makes the following
remark: "As far as I can judge, the Indian of poetical fiction, is
like the shepherd of pastoral romance, a mere personification of
imaginary attributes." It may be so, and perhaps most heroes and
heroines of novels and romances, are principally creations of fancy;
but if the author of the Sketch Book, meant to assert, that the
children of the forest were altogether unsusceptible of some of the
noble and tender emotions of our nature--he stands opposed by
undoubted evidence to the contrary. Who does not believe, for example,
what our own history has taught, of the matchless purity and guileless
simplicity of Pocahontas--the lofty spirit of Totopotomoi, and the
rare magnanimity of Logan? The passion of love indeed, as modified and
refined in civilized life, has not often been found in the breast of
the Indian warrior, but even to this general truth, there have been
numerous exceptions, and among them, I have never met with one so
marked and striking, as that which is recorded in the following story.