"Our Legislature has called for informat_Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers

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

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_.

Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers · 第 83 / 84 章

"Our Legislature has called for information on the subject. And for many