related exclusively to either the medicine dance, or the wabeno dance;
and each section of figures, related exclusively to one or the other.
There was no intermixture or commingling of characters, although the
class of subjects were sometimes common to each. It was perceived,
subsequently, that this classification of symbols extended to the songs
devoted to war, to hunting, and to other specific topics. The entire
inscriptive system, reaching from its first rudimental characters, in
the ad-je-da-tig, or grave board, to the extended roll of bark covered
with the incriptions of their magicians and prophets, derived a new
interest-from this feature. It was easy to perceive that much
comparative precision was imparted to interpretations in the hands of
the initiated, which before, or to others, had very little. An interest
was thus cast over it distinct from its novelty. And in truth, the
entire pictorial system was thus invested with the character of a
subject of acurate investigation, which promised both interest and
instruction.
It has been thought that a simple statement of these circumstances,
would best answer the end in view, and might well occupy the place of a
more formal or profound introduction. In bringing forward the elements
of the system, after much reflection, it is thought, however, that a few
remarks on the general character of this art may not be out of place.
For, simple as it is, we perceive in it the native succedaneum for
letters. It is not only the sole graphic mode they have few
communicating ideas, but it is the mode of communicating all classes of
ideas commonly entertained by them--such as their ideas of war, of
hunting, of religion, and of magic and necromancy. So considered, it
reveals a new and unsuspected mode of obtaining light on their opinions
of a deity, of the structure or cosmogony of the globe, of astronomy,
the various classes of natural objects, their ideas of immortality and a
future state, and the prevalent notions of the union of spiritual and
material matter. So wide and varied, indeed, is the range opened by the
subject, that we may consider the Indian system of picture writing as
the thread which ties up the scroll of the Red man's views of life and
death, reveals the true theory of his hopes and fears, and denotes the
relation he bears, in the secret chambers of his own thoughts, to his
Maker. What a stoic and suspicious temper would often hold him back from
uttering to another, and what a limited language would sometimes prevent
his fully revealing, if he wished, symbols and figures can be made to
represent and express. The Indian is not a man prone to describe his
god, but he is ready to depict him, by a symbol. He may conceal under
the figures of a serpent, a turtle, or a wolf, wisdom, strength, or
malignity, or convey under the picture of the sun, the idea of a
supreme, all-seeing intelligence. But he is not prepared to discourse
upon these things. What he believes on this head, he will not declare to
a white man or a stranger. His happiness and success in life, are
thought to depend upon the secrecy of that knowledge of the Creator and
his system in the Indian view of benign and malignant agents. To reveal
this to others, even to his own people, is, he believes, to expose
himself to the counteracting influence of other agents known to his
subtle scheme of necromancy and superstition, and to hazard success and
life itself. This conduces to make the Red man eminently a man of fear,
suspicion, and secrecy. But he cannot avoid some of these disclosures in
his pictures and figures. These figures represent ideas--whole ideas,
and their juxtaposition or relation on a roll of bark, a tree, or a
rock, discloses a continuity of ideas. This is the basis of the system.
Picture writing is indeed the literature of the Indians. It cannot be
interpreted, however rudely, without letting one know what the Red man
thinks and believes. It shadows forth the Indian intellect, it stands in
the place of letters for the Unishinaba.[24] It shows the Red man in all
periods of our history; both as he _was_, and as he _is_; for there is
nothing more true than that, save and except the comparatively few
instances where they have truly embraced experimental christianity,
there has not
[At this point, there is at least one missing page, though the
pagination is continuous.]
FOOTNOTES:
[23] London, 1747, p. 190.
[24] A generic term denoting the common people of the Indian race.
GRAVE CREEK MOUND.
This gigantic tumulus, the largest in the Ohio valley, was opened some
four or five years ago, and found to contain some articles of high
antiquarian value, in addition to the ordinary discoveries of human
bones, &c. A rotunda was built under its centre, walled with brick, and
roofed over, and having a long gallery leading into it, at the base of
the mound. Around this circular wall, in the centre of this heavy and
damp mass of earth, with its atmosphere of peculiar and pungent
character, the skeletons and other disinterred articles, are hung up for
the gratification of visiters, the whole lighted up with candles, which
have the effect to give a strikingly sepulchral air to the whole scene.
But what adds most to this effect, is a kind of exuded flaky matter,
very white and soft, and rendered brilliant by dependent drops of water,
which hangs in rude festoons from the ceiling.
To this rotunda, it is said, a delegation of Indians paid a visit a year
or two since. In the "Wheeling Times and Advertiser" of the 30th August
1843, the following communication, respecting this visit, introducing a
short dramatic poem, was published.
"An aged Cherokee chief who, on his way to the west, visited the rotunda
excavated in this gigantic tumulus, with its skeletons and other relics
arranged around the walls, became so indignant at the desecration and
display of sepulchral secrets to the white race; that his companions and
interpreter found it difficult to restrain him from assassinating the
guide. His language assumed the tone of fury, and he brandished his
knife, as they forced him out of the passage. Soon after, he was found
prostrated, with his senses steeped in the influence of alcohol.
"'Tis not enough! that hated race
Should hunt us out, from grove and place
And consecrated shore--where long
Our fathers raised the lance and song--
'Tis not enough!--that we must go
Where streams and rushing fountains flow
Whose murmurs, heard amid our fears,
Fall only on a stranger's ears--
'Tis not enough!--that with a wand,
They sweep away our pleasant land,
And bid us, as some giant-foe,
Or willing, or unwilling _go_!
But they must ope our very graves
To tell the _dead_--they too, are slaves."
NAMES OF THE AMERICAN LAKES.
Ontario, is a word from the Wyandot, or, as called by the Iroquois,
Quatoghie language. This tribe, prior to the outbreak of the war against
them, by their kindred the Iroquois, lived on a bay, near Kingston,
which was the ancient point of embarkation and debarkation, or, in other
words, at once the commencement and the terminus of the portage,
according to the point of destination for all, who passed into or out of
the lake. From such a point it was natural that a term so euphonous,
should prevail among Europeans, over the other Indian names in use. The
Mohawks and their confederates, generally, called it Cadaracqui--which
was also their name for the St. Lawrence. The Onondagas, it is believed,
knew it, in early times, by the name of Oswego.[25] Of the meaning of
Ontario, we are left in the dark by commentators on the Indian.
Philology casts some light on the subject. The first syllable, _on_, it
may be observed, appears to be the notarial increment or syllable of
Onondio, a hill. Tarak, is clearly, the same phrase, written darac, by
the French, in the Mohawk compound of Cadaracqui; and denotes rocks,
i.e. rocks standing in the water. In the final vowels _io_, we have the
same term, with the same meaning which they carry in the Seneca, or old
Mingo word Ohio.[26] It is descriptive of an extended and beautiful
water prospect, or landscape. It possesses all the properties of an
exclamation, in other languages, but according to the unique principles
of the Indian grammar, it is an exclamation-substantive. How beautiful!
[the prospect, scene present.]
Erie is the name of a tribe conquered or extinguished by the Iroquois.
We cannot stop to inquire into this fact historically, farther than to
say, that it was the policy of this people to adopt into their different
tribes of the confederacy, the remnants of nations whom they conquered,
and that it was not probable, therefore, that the Eries were
annihilated. Nor is it probable that they were a people very remote in
kindred and language from the ancient Sinondowans, or Senecas, who, it
may be supposed, by crushing them, destroyed and exterminated their name
only, while they strengthened their numbers by this inter-adoption. In
many old maps, this lake bears the name of Erie or "Oskwago."
Huron, is the _nom de guerre_ of the French, for the "Yendats," as they
are called in some old authors, or the Wyandots. Charlevoix tells us
that it is a term derived from the French word _hure_, [a wild boar,]
and was applied to this nation from the mode of wearing their hair.
"Quelles Hures!" said the first visiters, when they saw them, and hence,
according to this respectable author, the word Huron.
When this nation, with their confederates, the Algonquins, or
Adirondaks, as the Iroquois called them, were overthrown in several
decisive battles on the St. Lawrence, between Montreal and Quebec, and
compelled to fly west; they at first took shelter in this lake, and thus
transferred their name to it. With them, or at least, at the same
general era, came some others of the tribes who made a part of the
people called by the French, Algonquins, or Nipercineans, and who thus
constituted the several tribes, speaking a closely cognate language,
whose descendants are regarded by philologists, as the modern
Lake-Algonquins.
The French sometimes called this lake _Mer douce_, or the Placid sea.
The Odjibwas and some other northern tribes of that stock, call it
Ottowa lake. No term has been found for it in the Iroquois language,
unless it be that by which they distinguished its principal seat of
trade, negociation and early rendezvous, the island of Michilimackinac,
which they called Tiedonderaghie.
Michigan is a derivative from two Odjibwa-Algonquin words, signifying
large, i.e. large in relation to masses in the inorganic kingdom, and a
lake. The French called it, generally, during the earlier periods of
their transactions, the lake of the Illinese, or Illinois.
Superior, the most northwesterly, and the largest of the series, is a
term which appears to have come into general use, at a comparatively
early era, after the planting of the English colonies. The French
bestowed upon it, unsuccessfully, one or two names, the last of which
was Traci, after the French minister of this name. By the
Odjibwa-Algonquins, who at the period of the French discovery, and who
still occupy its borders, it is called Gitch-Igomee, or The Big
Sea-water; from Gitchee, great, and guma, a generic term for bodies of
water. The term IGOMA, is an abbreviated form of this, suggested for
adoption.
* * * * *
The poetry of the Indians, is the poetry of naked thought. They have
neither rhyme, nor metre to adorn it.
Tales and traditions occupy the place of books, with the Red Race.--They
make up a kind of oral literature, which is resorted to, on long winter
evenings, for the amusement of the lodge.
The love of independence is so great with these tribes, that they have
never been willing to load their political system with the forms of a
regular government, for fear it might prove oppressive.
To be governed and to be enslaved, are ideas which have been confounded
by the Indians.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Vide a Reminiscence of Oswego.
[26] The sound of i in this word, as in Ontario, is long e in the
Indian.
GEOGRAPHICAL TERMINOLOGY OF THE U. STATES,
DERIVED FROM THE INDIAN LANGUAGE.
_These Extracts are made from "Cyclopædia Indiænsis" a MS. work in
preparation._
No. I.
HUDSON RIVER.--By the tribes who inhabited the area of the present
County of Dutchess, and other portions of its eastern banks, as low down
as Tappan, this river was called Shatemuc--which is believed to be a
derivative from Shata, a pelican. The Minisi, who inhabited the west
banks, below the point denoted, extending indeed over all the east half
of New Jersey, to the falls of the Raritan, where they joined their
kindred the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares proper, called it
Mohicanittuck--that is to say, River of the Mohicans. The Mohawks, and
probably the other branches of the Iroquois, called it Cahohatatea--a
term of which the interpreters who have furnished the word, do not give
an explanation. The prefixed term Caho, it may be observed, is their
name for the lower and principal falls of the Mohawk. Sometimes this
prefix was doubled, with the particle _ha_, thrown in between. Hatatea
is clearly one of those descriptive and affirmative phrases representing
objects in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, which admitted as we see,
in other instances of their compounds, a very wide range. By some of the
more westerly Iroquois, the river was called Sanataty.
ALBANY.--The name by which this place was known to the Iroquois, at an
early day, was Schenectady, a term which, as recently pronounced by a
daughter of Brant, yet living in Canada, has the still harsher sound of
Skoh-nek-ta-ti, with a stress on the first, and the accent strongly on
the second syllable, the third and fourth being pronounced rapidly and
short. The transference of this name, to its present location, by the
English, on the bestowal on the place by Col. Nichols, of a new name,
derived from the Duke of York's Scottish title, is well known, and is
stated, with some connected traditions, by Judge Benson, in his
eccentric memoir before the New York Historical Society. The meaning of
this name, as derived from the authority above quoted, is _Beyond the
Pines_, having been applied exclusively in ancient times, to the
southern end of the ancient portage path, from the Mohawk to the Hudson.
By the Minci, who did not live here, but extended, however, on the west
shore above Coxackie, and even Coeymans, it appears to have been called
Gaishtinic. The Mohegans, who long continued to occupy the present area
of Rensselear and Columbia counties, called it Pempotawuthut, that is to
say, the City or Place of the Council Fire. None of these terms appear
to have found favour with the European settlers, and, together with
their prior names of Beaverwyck and Fort Orange, they at once gave way,
in 1664, to the present name. A once noted eminence, three miles west,
on the plains, i.e. Trader's Hill, was called Isutchera, or by prefixing
the name for a hill, Yonondio Isutchera. It means the hill of oil.
Norman's Kill, which enters the Hudson a little below, the Mohawks
called Towasentha, a term which is translated by Dr. Yates, to mean, a
place of many dead.
NIAGARA.--It is not in unison, perhaps, with general expectation, to
find that the exact translation of this name does not entirely fulfil
poetic preconception. By the term O-ne-aw-ga-ra, the Mohawks and their
co-tribes described on the return of their war excursions, the neck of
water which connects lake Erie with Ontario. The term is derived from
their name for the human neck. Whether this term was designed to have,
as many of their names do, a symbolic import, and to denote the
importance of this communication in geography, as connecting the head
and heart of the country, can only be conjectured. Nor is it, in this
instance, probable. When Europeans came to see the gigantic falls which
marked the strait, it was natural that they should have supposed the
name descriptive of that particular feature, rather than the entire
river and portage. We have been assured, however, that it is not their
original name for the water-fall, although with them, as with us, it may
have absorbed this meaning.
BUFFALO.--The name of this place in the Seneca, is Te-ho-sa-ro-ro. Its
import is not stated.
DETROIT.--By the Wyandots, this place is called Teuchsagrondie; by the
Lake tribes of the Algic type, Wa-we-á-tun-ong: both terms signify the
Place of the turning or Turned Channel. It has been remarked by visiters
who reach this place at night, or in dark weather, or are otherwise
inattentive to the courses, that owing to the extraordinary involutions
of the current the sun appears to rise in the wrong place.
CHICAGO.--This name, in the Lake Algonquin dialects, to preserve the
same mode of orthography, is derived from Chicagowunzh, the wild onion
or leek. The orthography is French, as they were the discoverers and
early settlers of this part of the west. Kaug, in these dialects is a
porcupine, and She kaug a polecat. The analogies in these words are
apparent, but whether the onion was named before or after the animal,
must be judged if the _age_ of the derivation be sought for.
TUSCALOOSA, a river of Alabama. From the Chacta words _tushka_,
warrior, and _lusa_ black.--[Gallatin.]
ARAGISKE, the Iroquois name for Virginia.
ASSARIGOA, the name of the Six Nations for the Governor of Virginia.
OWENAGUNGAS, a general name of the Iroquois for the New England Indians.
OTESEONTEO, a spring which a the head of the river Delaware.
ONTONAGON; a considerable river of lake Superior, noted from early
times, for the large mass of native copper found on its banks. This name
is said to have been derived from the following incident. It is known
that there is a small bay and dead water for some distance within its
mouth. In and out of this embayed water, the lake alternately flows,
according to the influence of the winds, and other causes, upon its
level. An Indian woman had left her wooden dish, or Onagon, on the
sands, at the shore of this little bay, where she had been engaged. On
coming back from her lodge, the outflowing current had carried off her
valued utensil. Nia Nin-do-nau-gon! she exclaimed, for it was a curious
piece of workmanship. That is to say--Alas! my dish!
CHUAH-NAH-WHAH-HAH, or Valley of the Mountains. A new pass in the Rocky
Mountains, discovered within a few years. It is supposed to be in N.
latitude about 40°. The western end of the valley gap is 30 miles wide,
which narrows to 20 at its eastern termination, it then turns oblique to
the north, and the opposing sides appear to close the pass, yet there is
a narrow way quite to the foot of the mountain. On the summit there is a
large beaver pond, which has outlets both ways, but the eastern stream
dries early in the season, while there is a continuous flow of water
west. In its course, it has several beautiful, but low cascades, and
terminates in a placid and delightful stream. This pass is now used by
emigrants.
AQUIDNECK.--The Narragansett name for Rhode Island. Roger Williams
observes, that he could never obtain the meaning of it from the natives.
The Dutch, as appears by a map of Novi Belgii published at Amsterdam in
1659, called it Roode Eylant, or Red Island, from the autumnal colour of
its foliage. The present term, as is noticed, in Vol. III. of the
Collections of the R. I. Hist. Soc. is derived from this.
INCAPATCHOW, a beautiful lake in the mountains at the sources of the
river Hudson.--[Charles F. Hoffman, Esq.]
HOUSATONIC; a river originating in the south-western part of
Massachusetts, and flowing through the State of Connecticut into Long
Island Sound, at Stratford. It is a term of Mohegan origin. This tribe
on retiring eastward from the banks of the Hudson, passed over the
High-lands, into this inviting valley. We have no transmitted etymology
of the term, and must rely on the general principles of their
vocabulary. It appears to have been called the valley of the stream
beyond the Mountains, from _on_, the notarial sign of wudjo, a mountain,
atun, a generic phrase for stream or channel, and ic, the inflection for
locality.
WEA-NUD-NEC.--The Indian name, as furnished by Mr. O'Sullivan, [D. Rev.]
for Saddle Mountain, Massachusetts. It appears to be a derivative from
Wa-we-a, round, i.e. any thing round or crooked, in the inanimate
creation.
MA-HAI-WE; The Mohegan term, as given by Mr. Bryant [N. Y. E. P.] for
Great Barrington, Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
MASSACHUSETTS.--This was not the name of a particular tribe, but a
geographical term applied, it should seem, to that part of the shores of
the North Atlantic, which is swept by the tide setting into, and around
the peninsula of Cape Cod, and the wide range of coast trending
southerly, It became a generic word, at an early day, for the tribes who
inhabited this coast. It is said to be a word of Narragansett origin,
and to signify the Blue Hills. This is the account given of it by Roger
Williams, who was told, by the Indians, that it had its origin from the
appearance of an island off the coast. It would be more in conformity to
the general requisitions of ethnography, to denominate the language the
New England-Algonquin, for there are such great resemblances in the
vocabulary and such an identity in grammatical construction, in these
tribes, that we are constantly in danger, by partial conclusions as to
original supremacy, of doing injustice. The source of origin was
doubtless west and south west, but we cannot stop at the Narragansetts,
who were themselves derivative from tribes still farther south. The
general meaning given by Williams seems, however, to be sustained, so
far as can now be judged. The terminations in _ett_, and _set_, as well
as those in _at_ and _ak_, denoted locality in these various tribes. We
see also, in the antipenultimate Chu, the root of Wudjo, a mountain.
TA-HA-WUS, a very commanding elevation, several thousand feet above the
sea, which has of late years, been discovered at the sources of the
Hudson, and named Mount Marcy. It signifies, he splits the
sky.--[Charles F. Hoffman, Esq.]
MONG, the name of a distinguished chief of New England, as it appears to
be recorded in the ancient pictorial inscription on the Dighton Rock, in
Massachusetts, who flourished before the country was colonized by the
English. He was both a war captain, and a prophet, and employed the arts
of the latter office, to increase his power and influence, in the
former. By patient application of his ceremonial arts, he secured the
confidence of a large body of men, who were led on, in the attack on his
enemies, by a man named Piz-hu. In this onset, it is claimed that he
killed forty men, and lost three. To the warrior who should be
successful, in this enterprize, he had promised his younger sister.
[Such are the leading events symbolized by this inscription, of which
extracts giving full details, as interpreted by an Indian chief, now
living, and read before the Am. Ethnological Society, in 1843, will be
furnished, in a subsequent number.]
TIOGA.--A stream, and a county of the State of New-York. From Teoga, a
swift current, exciting admiration.
DIONDEROGA, an ancient name of the Mohawk tribe, for the site at the
mouth of the Schoharie creek, where Fort Hunter was afterwards built.
[Col. W. L. Stone.]
ALMOUCHICO, a generic name of the Indians for New England, as printed
on the Amsterdam map of 1659, in which it is stated that it was thus "by
d inwoonders genaemt." (So named by the natives.)
IROCOISIA, a name bestowed in the map, above quoted, on that portion of
the present state of Vermont, which lies west of the Green Mountains,
stretching along the eastern bank of Lake Champlain. By the application
of the word, it is perceived that the French were not alone in the use
they made of the apparently derivative term "Iroquois," which they cave
to the (then) Five Nations.
NAMES OF THE SEASONS.
The following are the names of the four seasons, in the Odjibwa tongue:
Pe-bon, Winter, From Kone, Snow.
Se-gwun, Spring, " Seeg, Running water.
Ne-bin, Summer, " Anib, A leaf.
Ta-gwá-gi, Autumn, " Gwag, The radix of behind etc.
By adding the letter g to these terms, they are placed in the relation
of verbs in the future tense, but a limited future, and the terms then
denote _next winter_, &c. Years, in their account of time, are counted
by winters. There is no other term, but pe-boan, for a year. The year
consists of twelve lunar months, or moons. A moon is called Geézis, or
when spoken of in contradistinction to the sun, Dibik Geezis, or
night-sun. The cardinal points are as follows.
(_a_) North, Ke wá din-ung.
(_b_) South, O shá wan-ung.
(_c_) East, Wá bun-ung.
(_d_) West, Ká be un-ung.
_a._ Kewadin is a compound derived from Ke-wa, to return, or come home,
and nodin, the wind. _b._ Oshauw is, from a root not apparent, but which
produces also ozau, yellow, &c. _c._ Waban is from ab, or wab, light.
_d._ Kabeun, is the name of a mythological person, who is spoken of, in
their fictions, as the father of the winds. The inflection ung, or oong,
in each term, denotes course, place, or locality.
LETTERS ON THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE WESTERN COUNTRY,
ADDRESSED TO THE LATE WILLIAM L. STONE, EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK
COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.
I.
WHEELING (Va.), August 19th, 1843.
I have just accomplished the passage of the Alleghany mountains, in the
direction from Baltimore to this place, and must say, that aside from
the necessary fatigue of night riding, the pass from the Cumberland
mountains and Laurel Hill is one of the easiest and most free from
danger of any known to me in this vast range. An excellent railroad now
extends from Baltimore, by Frederick and Harper's Ferry, up the Potomac
valley and its north branch quite to Cumberland, which is seated just
under the mountains, whose peaks would seem to bar all farther approach.
The national road finds its way, however, through a gorge, and winds
about where "Alps on Alps arise," till the whole vast and broad-backed
elevation is passed, and we descend west, over a smooth, well
constructed macadamized road, with a velocity which is some compensation
for the toil of winding our way up. Uniontown is the first principal
place west. The Monongahela is crossed at Brownsville, some forty miles
above Pittsburgh, whence the road, which is everywhere well made and
secured with fine stone bridges, culverts and viaducts, winds around a
succession of most enchanting hills, till it enters a valley, winds up a
few more hills, and brings the travellers out, on the banks of the Ohio,
at this town.
The entire distance from the head of the Chesapeake to the waters of the
Ohio is not essentially different from three hundred miles. We were less
than two days in passing it, twenty-six hours of which, part night and
part day, were spent in post-coaches between Cumberland and this place.
Harper's Ferry is an impressive scene, but less so than it would be to a
tourist who had not his fancy excited by injudicious descriptions. To
me, the romance was quite taken away by driving into it with a
tremendous clattering power of steam. The geological structure of this
section of country, from water to water, is not without an impressive
lesson. In rising from the Chesapeake waters the stratified rocks are
lifted up, pointing west, or towards the Alleghanies, and after crossing
the summit they point east, or directly contrary, like the two sides of
the roof of a house, and leave the inevitable conclusion that the
Alleghanies have been lifted up by a lateral rent, as it were, at the
relative point of the ridge pole. It is in this way that the granites
and their congeners have been raised up into their present elevations.
I did not see any evidence of that wave-like or undulatory structure,
which was brought forward as a theory last year, in an able paper
forwarded by Professor Rogers, and read at the meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science at Manchester. No organic
remains are, of course, visible, in this particular section, at least
until we strike the coal and iron-stone formation of Pittsburgh. But I
have been renewedly impressed with the opinion, so very opposite to the
present geological theory, that less than seven thousand years is
sufficient, on scientific principles, to account for all the phenomena
of fossil plants, shells, bones and organic remains, as well as the
displacements, disruptions, subsidences and rising of strata, and other
evidences of extensive physical changes and disturbances on the earth's
surface. And I hope to live to see some American geologist build up a
theory on just philosophical and scientific principles, which shall bear
the test of truth.
But you will, perhaps, be ready to think that I have felt more interest
in the impressions of plants in stone, than is to be found in the field
of waving corn before the eye. I have, however, by no means neglected
the latter; and can assure you that the crops of corn, wheat and other
grains, throughout Maryland, Pennsylvania and Western Virginia, are
excellent. Even the highest valleys in the Alleghanies are covered with
crops of corn, or fields of stacked wheat and other grains. Generally,
the soil west of the mountains is more fertile. The influence of the
great western limestones, as one of its original materials, and of the
oxide of iron, is clearly denoted in heavier and more thrifty cornfields
along the Monongahela and Ohio valleys.
Of the Ohio River itself, one who had seen it in its full flow, in April
and May, would hardly recognize it now. Shrunk in a volume far below its
noble banks, with long spits of sand and gravel running almost across
it, and level sandy margins, once covered by water, where armies might
now manoeuvre, it is but the skeleton of itself. Steamboats of a
hundred tons burden now scarcely creep along its channel, which would
form cockboats for the floating palaces to be seen here in the days of
its vernal and autumnal glory.
Truly yours,
HENRY R. COLCRAFT
II.
GRAVE CREEK FLATS (Va.), August 23, 1843.
I have devoted several days to the examination of the antiquities of
this place and its vicinity, and find them to be of even more interest
than was anticipated. The most prominent object of curiosity is the
great tumulus, of which notices have appeared in western papers; but
this heavy structure of earth is not isolated. It is but one of a series
of mounds and other evidences of ancient occupation at this point, of
more than ordinary interest. I have visited and examined seven mounds,
situated within a short distance of each other. They occupy the summit
level of a rich alluvial plain, stretching on the left or Virginia bank
of the Ohio, between the junctions of Big and Little Grave Creeks with
that stream. They appear to have been connected by low earthen
entrenchments, of which plain traces are still visible on some parts of
the commons. They included a well, stoned up in the usual manner, which
is now filled with rubbish.
The summit of this plain is probably seventy-five feet above the present
summer level of the Ohio. It constitutes the second bench, or rise of
land, above the water. It is on this summit, and on one of the most
elevated parts of it, that the great tumulus stands. It is in the shape
of a broad cone, cut off at the apex, where it is some fifty feet
across. This area is quite level, and commands a view of the entire
plain, and of the river above and below, and the west shores of the Ohio
in front. Any public transaction on this area would be visible to
multitudes around it, and it has, in this respect, all the advantages of
the Mexican and Yucatanese teocalli. The circumference of the base has
been stated at a little under nine hundred feet; the height is
sixty-nine feet.
The most interesting object of antiquarian inquiry is a small flat
stone, inscribed with antique alphabetic characters, which was disclosed
on the opening of the large mound. These characters are in the ancient
rock alphabet of sixteen right and acute angled single stokes, used by
the Pelasgi and other early Mediterranean nations, and which is the
parent of the modern Runic as well as the Bardic. It is now some four
or five years since the completion of the excavations, so far as they
have been made, and the discovery of this relic. Several copies of it
soon got abroad, which differed from each other, and, it was supposed,
from the original. This conjecture is true; neither the print published
in the Cincinnati Gazette, in 1839, nor that in the American Pioneer, in
1843, is correct. I have terminated this uncertainty by taking copies by
a scientific process, which does not leave the lines and figures to the
uncertainty of man's pencil.
The existence of this ancient art here could hardly be admitted,
otherwise than as an insulated fact, without some corroborative
evidence, in habits and customs, which it would be reasonable to look
for in the existing ruins of ancient occupancy. It is thought some such
testimony has been found. I rode out yesterday three miles back to the
range of high hills which encompass this sub-valley, to see a rude tower
of stone standing on an elevated point, called Parr's point, which
commands a view of the whole plain, and which appears to have been
constructed as a watch-tower, or look-out, from which to descry an
approaching enemy. It is much dilapidated. About six or seven feet of
the work is still entire. It is circular, and composed of rough stones,
laid without mortar, or the mark of a hammer. A heavy mass of fallen
wall lies around, covering an area of some forty feet in diameter. Two
similar points of observation, occupied by dilapidated towers, are
represented to exist, one at the prominent summit of the Ohio and Grave
Creek hills, and another on the promontory on the opposite side of the
Ohio, in Belmont county, Ohio.
It is known to all acquainted with the warlike habits of our Indians,
that they never have evinced the foresight to post a regular sentry, and
these rude towers may be regarded as of cotemporaneous age with the
interment of the inscription.
Several polished tubes of stone have been found, in one of the lesser
mounds, the use of which is not very apparent. One of these, now on my
table, is 12 inches long, 1-1/4 wide at one end, and 1-1/2 at the other.
It is made of a fine, compact, lead blue steatite, mottled, and has been
constructed by boring, in the manner of a gun barrel. This boring is
continued to within about three-eighths of an inch of the larger end,
through which but a small aperture is left. If this small aperture be
looked through, objects at a distance are more clearly seen. Whether it
had this telescopic use, or others, the degree of art evinced in its
construction is far from rude. By inserting a wooden rod and valve, this
tube would be converted into a powerful syphon, or syringe.
I have not space to notice one or two additional traits, which serve to
awaken new interest at this ancient point of aboriginal and apparently
mixed settlement, and must omit them till my next.
III.
GRAVE CREEK FLATS, August 24, 1843.
The great mound at these flats was opened as a place of public resort
about four years ago. For this purpose a horizontal gallery to its
centre was dug and bricked up, and provided with a door. The centre was
walled round as a rotunda, of about twenty-five feet diameter, and a
shaft sunk from the top to intersect it; it was in these two excavations
that the skeletons and accompanying relics and ornaments were found. All
these articles are arranged for exhibition in this rotunda, which is
lighted up with candles. The lowermost skeleton is almost entire, and in
a good state of preservation, and is put up by means of wires, on the
walls. It has been overstretched in the process so as to measure six
feet; it should be about five feet eight inches. It exhibits a noble
frame of the human species, bearing a skull with craniological
developments of a highly favorable character. The face bones are
elongated, with a long chin and symmetrical jaw, in which a full and
fine set of teeth, above and below, are present. The skeletons in the
upper vault, where the inscription stone was found, are nearly all
destroyed.
It is a damp and gloomy repository, and exhibits in the roof and walls
of the rotunda one of the most extraordinary sepulchral displays which
the world affords. On casting the eye up to the ceiling, and the heads
of the pillars supporting it, it is found to be encrusted, or rather
festooned, with a white, soft, flaky mass of matter, which had exuded
from the mound above. This apparently animal exudation is as white as
snow. It hangs in pendent masses and globular drops; the surface is
covered with large globules of clear water, which in the reflected light
have all the brilliancy of diamonds. These drops of water trickle to the
floor, and occasionally the exuded white matter falls. The wooden
pillars are furnished with the appearance of capitals, by this
substance. That it is the result of a soil highly charged with particles
of matter, arising from the decay or incineration of human bodies, is
the only theory by which we may account for the phenomenon. Curious and
unique it certainly is, and with the faint light of a few candles it
would not require much imagination to invest the entire rotunda with
sylph-like forms of the sheeted dead.
An old Cherokee chief, who visited this scene, recently, with his
companions, on his way to the West, was so excited and indignant at the
desecration of the tumulus, by this display of bones and relics to the
gaze of the white race, that he became furious and unmanageable; his
friends and interpreters had to force him out, to prevent his
assassinating the guide; and soon after he drowned his senses in
alcohol.
That this spot was a very ancient point of settlement by the hunter
race in the Ohio valley, and that it was inhabited by the present red
race of North American Indians, on the arrival of whites west of the
Alleghanies, are both admitted facts; nor would the historian and
antiquary ever have busied themselves farther in the matter had not the
inscribed stone come to light, in the year 1839. I was informed,
yesterday, that another inscription stone had been found in one of the
smaller mounds on these flats, about five years ago, and have obtained
data sufficient as to its present location to put the Ethnological
Society on its trace. If, indeed, these inscriptions shall lead us to
admit that the continent was visited by Europeans prior to the era of
Columbus, it is a question of very high antiquarian interest to
determine who the visitors were, and what they have actually left on
record in these antique tablets.
I have only time to add a single additional fact. Among the articles
found in this cluster of mounds, the greater part are commonplace, in
our western mounds and town ruins. I have noticed but one which bears
the character of that unique type of architecture found by Mr. Stephens
and Mr. Catherwood in Central America and Yucatan. With the valuable
monumental standards of comparison furnished by these gentlemen before
me, it is impossible not to recognize, in an ornamental stone, found in
one of the lesser mounds here, a specimen of similar workmanship. It is
in the style of the heavy feather-sculptured ornaments of Yucatan--the
material being a wax yellow sand-stone, darkened by time. I have taken
such notes and drawings of the objects above referred to, as will enable
me, I trust, in due time, to give a connected account of them to our
incipient society.
IV.
MASSILLON, Ohio, August 27th, 1843.
Since my last letter I have traversed the State of Ohio, by stage, to
this place. In coming up the Virginia banks of the Ohio from
Moundsville, I passed a monument, of simple construction, erected to the
memory of a Captain Furman and twenty-one men, who were killed by the
Indians, in 1777, at that spot. They had been out, from the fort at
Wheeling, on a scouting party, and were waylaid at a pass called the
narrows. The Indians had dropped a pipe and some trinkets in the path,
knowing that the white men would pick them up, and look at them, and
while the latter were grouped together in this act, they fired and
killed every man. The Indians certainly fought hard for the possession
of this valley, aiming, at all times, to make up by stratagem what they
lacked in numbers. I doubt whether there is in the history of the
spread of civilisation over the world a theatre so rife with partisan
adventure, massacre and murder, as the valley of the Ohio and the
country west of the Alleghany generally presented between the breaking
out of the American revolution, in '76, and the close of the Black Hawk
war in 1832. The true era, in fact, begins with the French war, in 1744,
and terminates with the Florida war, the present year. A work on this
subject, drawn from authentic sources, and written with spirit and
talent, would be read with avidity and possess a permanent interest.
The face of the country, from the Ohio opposite Wheeling to the waters
of the Tuscarawas, the north fork of the Muskingum, is a series of high
rolling ridges and knolls, up and down which the stage travels slowly.
Yet this section is fertile and well cultivated in wheat and corn,
particularly the latter, which looks well. This land cannot be purchased
under forty or fifty dollars an acre. Much of it was originally bought
for seventy-five cents per acre. It was over this high, wavy land, that
the old Moravian missionary road to Gnadenhutten ran, and I pursued it
to within six miles of the latter place. You will recollect this
locality as the scene of the infamous murder, by Williamson and his
party, of the non-resisting Christian Delawares under the ministry of
Heckewelder and Ziesberger.
On the Stillwater, a branch of the Tuscarawas, we first come to level
lands. This stream was noted, in early days, for its beaver and other
furs. The last beaver seen here was shot on its banks twelve years ago.
It had three legs, one having probably been caught in a trap or been
bitten off. It is known that not only the beaver, but the otter, wolf
and fox, will bite off a foot, to escape the iron jaws of a trap. It has
been said, but I know not on what good authority, that the hare will do
the same.
We first struck the Ohio canal at Dover. It is in every respect a well
constructed work, with substantial locks, culverts and viaducts. It is
fifty feet wide at the top, and is more than adequate for all present
purposes. It pursues the valley of the Tuscarawas up to the summit, by
which it is connected with the Cuyahuga, whose outlet is at Cleveland.
Towns and villages have sprung up along its banks, where before there
was a wilderness. Nothing among them impressed me more than the town of
Zoar, which is exclusively settled by Germans. There seems something of
the principles of association--one of the fallacies of the age--in its
large and single town store, hotel, &c., but I do not know how far they
may extend. Individual property is held. The evidences of thrift and
skill, in cultivation and mechanical and mill work, are most striking.
Every dwelling here is surrounded with fruit and fruit trees. The
botanical garden and hot-house are on a large scale, and exhibit a
favorable specimen of the present state of horticulture. One of the
assistants very kindly plucked for me some fine fruit, and voluntarily
offered it. Zoar is quite a place of resort as a ride for the
neighboring towns. I may remark, _en passant_, that there is a large
proportion of German population throughout Ohio. They are orderly,
thrifty and industrious, and fall readily into our political system and
habits. Numbers of them are well educated in the German. They embrace
Lutherans as well as Roman Catholics, the latter predominating.
Among the towns which have recently sprung up on the line of the canal,
not the least is the one from which I date this letter. The name of the
noted French divine (Massillon) was affixed to an uncultivated spot, by
some Boston gentlemen, some twelve or fourteen years ago. It is now one
of the most thriving, city-looking, business places in the interior of
Ohio. In the style of its stores, mills and architecture, it reminds the
visitor of that extraordinary growth and spirit which marked the early
years of the building of Rochester. It numbers churches for
Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, and also
Lutherans and Romanists. About three hundred barrels of flour can be
turned out per diem, by its mills. It is in the greatest wheat-growing
county in Ohio (Stark), but is not the county-seat, which is at Canton.
V.
DETROIT, Sept. 15th, 1843.
In passing from the interior of Ohio toward Lake Erie, the face of the
country exhibits, in the increased size and number of its boulder
stones, evidences of the approach of the traveller toward those
localities of sienites and other crystalline rocks, from which these
erratic blocks and water-worn masses appear to have been, in a remote
age of our planet, removed. The soil in this section has a freer mixture
of the broken down slates, of which portions are still in place on the
shores of Lake Erie. The result is a clayey soil, less favorable to
wheat and Indian corn. We came down the cultivated valley of the
Cuyahoga, and reached the banks of the lake at the fine town of
Cleveland, which is elevated a hundred feet, or more, above it, and
commands a very extensive view of the lake, the harbor and its ever-busy
shipping. A day was employed, by stage, in this section of my tour, and
the next carried me, by steamboat, to this ancient French capital.
Detroit has many interesting historical associations, and appears
destined, when its railroad is finished, to be the chief thoroughfare
for travellers to Chicago and the Mississippi valley. As my attention
has, however, been more taken up, on my way, with the past than the
present and future condition of the West, the chief interest which the
route has excited must necessarily arise from the same source.
Michigan connects itself in its antiquarian features with that character
of pseudo-civilisation, or modified barbarianism, of which the works and
mounds and circumvallations at Grave Creek Flats, at Marietta, at
Circleville and other well known points, are evidences. That this
improved condition of the hunter state had an ancient but partial
connection with the early civilisation of Europe, appears now to be a
fair inference, from the inscribed stone of Grave Creek, and other
traces of European arts, discovered of late. It is also evident that the
central American type of the civilisation, or rather advance to
civilisation, of the red race, reached this length, and finally went
down, with its gross idolatry and horrid rites, and was merged in the
better known and still existing form of the hunter state which was
found, respectively, by Cabot, Cartier, Verrezani, Hudson, and others,
who first dropped anchor on our coasts.
There is strong evidence furnished by a survey of the western country
that the teocalli type of the Indian civilisation, so to call it,
developed itself from the banks of the Ohio, in Tennessee and Virginia,
west and north-westwardly across the sources of the Wabash, the
Muskingum and other streams, toward Lake Michigan and the borders of
Wisconsin territory. The chief evidences of it, in Michigan and Indiana,
consist of a remarkable series of curious garden beds, or accurately
furrowed fields, the perfect outlines of which have been preserved by
the grass of the oak openings and prairies, and even among the heaviest
forests. These remains of an ancient cultivation have attracted much
attention from observing settlers on the Elkhart, the St. Joseph's, the
Kalamazoo and Grand river of Michigan. I possess some drawings of these
anomalous remains of by-gone industry in the hunter race, taken in
former years, which are quite remarkable. It is worthy of remark, too,
that no large tumuli, or teocalli, exist in this particular portion of
the West, the ancient population of which may therefore be supposed to
have been borderers, or frontier bands, who resorted to the Ohio valley
as their capital, or place of annual visitation. All the mounds
scattered through Northern Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, are mere barrows,
or repositories of the dead, and would seem to have been erected
posterior to the fall or decay of the gross idol worship and the offer
of human sacrifice. I have, within a day or two, received a singular
implement or ornament of stone, of a crescent shape, from Oakland, in
this State, which connects the scattered and out-lying remains of the
smaller mounds, and traces of ancient agricultural labor, with the
antiquities of Grave Creek Flats.
VI.
DETROIT, Sept. 16th, 1843.
The antiquities of Western America are to be judged of by isolated and
disjointed discoveries, which are often made at widely distant points
and spread over a very extensive area. The labor of comparison and
discrimination of the several eras which the objects of these
discoveries establish, is increased by this diffusion and disconnection
of the times and places of their occurrence, and is, more than all,
perhaps, hindered and put back by the eventual carelessness of the
discoverers, and the final loss or mutilation of the articles disclosed.
To remedy this evil, every discovery made, however apparently
unimportant, should in this era of the diurnal and periodical press be
put on record, and the objects themselves be either carefully kept, or
given to some public scientific institution.
An Indian chief called the Black Eagle, of river Au Sables (Michigan),
discovered a curious antique pipe of Etruscan ware, a few years ago, at
Thunder Bay. This pipe, which is now in my possession, is as remarkable
for its form as for the character of the earthenware from which it is
made, differing as it does so entirely from the coarse earthen pots and
vessels, the remains of which are scattered so generally throughout
North America. The form is semi-circular or horn-shaped, with a
quadrangular bowl, and having impressed in the ware ornaments at each
angle. I have never before, indeed, seen any pipes of Indian manufacture
of baked clay, or earthenware, such articles being generally carved out
of steatite, indurated clays, or other soft mineral substances. It is a
peculiarity of this pipe that it was smoked from the small end, which is
rounded for the purpose of putting it between the lips, without the
intervention of a stem.
The discoverer told me that he had taken it from a very antique grave. A
large hemlock tree, he said, had been blown down on the banks of the
river, tearing up, by its roots, a large mass of earth. At the bottom of
the excavation thus made he discovered a grave, which contained a vase,
out of which he took the pipe with some other articles. The vase, he
said, was broken, so that he did not deem it worth bringing away. The
other articles he described as bones.
Some time since I accompanied the chief Kewakonce, to get an ancient
clay pot, such as the Indians used when the Europeans arrived on the
continent. He said that he had discovered two such pots, in an entire
state, in a cave, or crevice, on one of the rocky islets extending
north, of Point Tessalon, which is the northern cape of the entrance of
the Straits of St. Mary's into Lake Huron. From this locality he had
removed one of them, and concealed it at a distant point. We travelled
in canoes. We landed on the northern shore of the large island of St.
Joseph, which occupies the jaws of those expanded straits. He led me up
an elevated ridge, covered with forest, and along a winding narrow path,
conducting to some old Indian cornfields. All at once he stopped in this
path. "We are now very near it," he said, and stood still, looking
toward the spot where he had concealed it, beneath a decayed trunk. He
did not, at last, appear to be willing to risk his luck in life--such is
Indian superstition--by being the actual discoverer of this object of
veneration to a white man, but allowed me to make, or rather complete,
the re-discovery.
With the exception of being cracked, this vessel is entire. It
corresponds, in material and character, with the fragments of pottery
usually found. It is a coarse ware, tempered with quartz or feld-spar,
and such as would admit a sudden fire to be built around it. It is some
ten inches in diameter, tulip-shaped, with a bending lip, and without
supports beneath. It was evidently used as retorts in a sand bath, there
being no contrivance for suspending it. I have forwarded this curious
relic entire to the city for examination. I asked the chief who
presented it to me, and who is a man of good sense, well acquainted with
Indian traditions, how long it was since such vessels had been used by
his ancestors. He replied, that he was the seventh generation, in a
direct line, since the French had first arrived in the lakes.
VII.
DETROIT, Sept. 16th, 1843.
There was found, in an island at the west extremity of Lake Huron, an
ancient repository of human bones, which appeared to have been gathered
from their first or ordinary place of sepulture, and placed in this rude
mausoleum. The island is called Isle Ronde by the French, and is of
small dimensions, although it has a rocky basis and affords sugar maple
and other trees of the hard wood species. This repository was first
disclosed by the action of the lake against a diluvial shore, in which
the bones were buried. At the time of my visit, vertebræ, tibiæ,
portions of crania and other bones were scattered down the fallen bank,
and served to denote the place of their interment, which was on the
margin of the plain. Some persons supposed that the leg and thigh bones
denoted an unusual length; but by placing them hip by hip with the
living specimen, this opinion was not sustained.
All these bones had been placed longitudinally. They were arranged in
order, in a wide grave, or trench. Contrary to the usual practice of the
present tribes of red men, the skeletons were laid north and south. I
asked several of the most aged Indian chiefs in that vicinity for
information respecting these bones--by what tribe they had been
deposited, and why they had been laid north and south, and not east and
west, as they uniformly bury. But, with the usual result as to early
Indian traditions, they had no information to offer. Chusco, an old
Ottawa prophet, since dead, remarked that they were probably of the time
of the Indian bones found in the caves on the island of Michilimackinac.
In a small plain on the same island, near the above repository, is a
long abandoned Indian burial-ground, in which the interments are made in
the ordinary way. This, I understood from the Indians, is of the era of
the occupation of Old Mackinac, or Peekwutinong, as they continue to
call it--a place which has been abandoned by both whites and Indians,
soldiers and missionaries, about seventy years. I caused excavations to
be made in these graves, and found their statements to be generally
verified by the character of the articles deposited with the skeletons;
at least they were all of a date posterior to the discovery of this part
of the country by the French. There were found the oxydated remains of
the brass mountings of a chief's fusil, corroded fire steels and other
steel implements, vermillion, wampum, and other cherished or valued
articles. I sent a perfect skull, taken from one of these graves, to Dr.
Morton, the author of "Crania," while he was preparing that work. No
Indians have resided on this island within the memory of any white man
or Indian with whom I have conversed. An aged chief whom I interrogated,
called Saganosh, who has now been dead some five or six years, told me
that he was a small boy when the present settlement on the island of
Michilimackinac was commenced, and the English first took post there,
and began to remove their cattle, &c., from the old fort on the
peninsula, and it was about that time that the Indian village of
Minnisains, or Isle Ronde, was abandoned. It had before formed a link,
as it were, in the traverse of this part of the lake (Huron) in canoes
to old Mackinac.
The Indians opposed the transfer of the post to the island of
Michilimackinac, and threatened the troops who were yet in the field.
They had no cannon, but the commanding officer sent a vessel to Detroit
for one. This vessel had a quick trip, down and up, and brought up a
gun, which was fired the evening she came into the harbor. This produced
an impression. I have made some inquiries to fix the date of this
transfer of posts, and think it was at or about the opening of the era
of the American revolution, at which period the British garrison did not
feel itself safe in a mere stockade of timber on the main shore. This
stockade, dignified with the name of a fort, had not been burned on the
taking of it, by surprise, and the massacre of the English troops by the
Indians, during Pontiac's war. This massacre, it will be recollected,
was in 1763--twelve years before the opening of the American war.
VIII.
DETROIT, Oct. 13th, 1843.
The so-called copper rock of Lake Superior was brought to this place, a
day or two since, in a vessel from Sault Ste-Marie, having been
transported from its original locality, on the Ontonagon river, at no
small labor and expense. It is upwards of twenty-three years since I
first visited this remarkable specimen of native copper, in the forests
of Lake Superior. It has been somewhat diminished in size and weight, in
the meantime, by visitors and travellers in that remote quarter; but
retains, very well, its original character and general features.
I have just returned from a re-examination of it in a store, in one of
the main streets of this city, where it has been deposited by the
present proprietor, who designs to exhibit it to the curious. Its
greatest length is four feet six inches; its greatest width about four
feet; its maximum thickness eighteen inches. These are rough
measurements with the rule. It is almost entirely composed of malleable
copper, and bears striking marks of the visits formerly paid to it, in
the evidences of portions which have from time to time been cut off.
There are no scales in the city large enough, or other means of
ascertaining its precise weight, and of thus terminating the uncertainty
arising from the several estimates heretofore made. It has been
generally estimated here, since its arrival, to weigh between six and
seven thousand pounds, or about three and a half tons, and is by far the
largest known and described specimen of native copper on the globe.
Rumors of a larger piece in South America are apocryphal.
The acquisition, to the curious and scientific world, of this
extraordinary mass of native metal is at least one of the practical
results of the copper-mining mania which carried so many adventurers
northward, into the region of Lake Superior, the past summer (1843). The
person who has secured this treasure (Mr. J. Eldred) has been absent, on
the business, since early in June. He succeeded in removing it from its
diluvial bed on the banks of the river, by a car and sectional railroad
of two links, formed of timber. The motive power was a tackle attached
to trees, which was worked by men, from fourteen to twenty of whom were
employed upon it. These rails were alternately moved forward, as the car
passed from the hindmost.
In this manner the rock was dragged four miles and a half, across a
rough country, to a curve of the river below its falls, and below the
junction of its forks, where it was received by a boat, and conveyed to
the mouth of the river, on the lake shore. At this point it was put on
board a schooner, and taken to the falls, or Sault Ste-Marie, and
thence, having been transported across the portage, embarked for
Detroit. The entire distance to this place is a little within one
thousand miles; three hundred and twenty of which lie beyond St. Mary's.
What is to be its future history and disposition remains to be seen. It
will probably find its way to the museum of the National Institute in
the new patent office at Washington. This would be appropriate, and it
is stated that the authorities have asserted their ultimate claim to it,
probably under the 3d article of the treaty of Fond du Lac, of the 5th
of August, 1826.
I have no books at hand to refer to the precise time, so far as known,
when this noted mass of copper first became known to Europeans. Probably
a hundred and eighty years have elapsed. Marquette, and his devoted
companion, passed up the shores of Lake Superior about 1668, which was
several years before the discovery of the Mississippi, by that eminent
missionary, by the way of the Wisconsin. From the letters of D'Ablon at
Sault Ste-Marie, it appears to have been known prior to the arrival of
La Salle. These allusions will be sufficient to show that the rock has a
historical notoriety. Apart from this, it is a specimen which is, both
mineralogically and geologically, well worthy of national preservation.
It is clearly a boulder, and bears marks of attrition from the action of
water, on some parts of its rocky surface as well as the metallic
portions. A minute mineralogical examination and description of it are
required. The adhering rock, of which there is less now than in 1820, is
apparently serpentine, in some parts steatitic, whereas the copper ores
of Keweena Point on that lake, are found exclusively in the amygdaloids
and greenstones of the trap formation. A circular depression of opaque
crystalline quartz, in the form of a semi-geode, exists in one face of
it; other parts of the mass disclose the same mineral. Probably 300 lbs.
of the metal have been hacked off, or detached by steel chisels, since
it has been known to the whites, most of this within late years.
IX.
DETROIT, Oct. 16th, 1843.
In the rapid development of the resources and wealth of the West, there
is no object connected with the navigation of the upper lakes of more
prospective importance than the improvement of the delta, or flats of
the St. Clair. It is here that the only practical impediment occurs to
the passage of heavy shipping, between Buffalo and Chicago. This delta
is formed by deposits at the point of discharge of the river St. Clair,
into Lake St. Clair, and occurs at the estimated distance of about
thirty-six miles above the city. The flats are fan-shaped, and spread,
I am inclined to think, upward of fifteen miles, on the line of their
greatest expansion.
There are three principal channels, besides sub-channels, which carry a
depth of from four to six fathoms to the very point of their exit into
the lake, where there is a bar in each. This bar, as is shown by the
chart of a survey made by officers Macomb and Warner, of the
topographical engineers, in 1842, is very similar to the bars at the
mouths of the upper lake rivers, and appears to be susceptible of
removal, or improvement, by similar means. The north channel carries
nine feet of water over this bar, the present season, and did the same
in 1842, and is the one exclusively used by vessels and steamboats. To
the latter this tortuous channel, which is above ten miles farther round
than the middle channel, presents no impediment, besides the intricacies
of the bar, but increased distance.
It is otherwise, and ever must remain so, to vessels propelled by sails.
Such vessels, coming up with a fair wind, find the bend so acute and
involved at _Point aux Chenes_, at the head of this channel, as to bring
the wind directly ahead. They are, consequently, compelled to cast
anchor, and await a change of wind to turn this point. A delay of eight
or ten days in the upward passage, is not uncommon at this place. Could
the bar of the middle channel, which is direct, be improved, the saving
in both time and distance above indicated would be made. This is an
object of public importance, interesting to all the lake States and
Territories, and would constitute a subject of useful consideration for
Congress. Every year is adding to the number and size of our lake
vessels. The rate of increase which doubles our population in a given
number of years must also increase the lake tonnage, and add new motives
for the improvement of its navigation.
Besides the St. Clair delta, I know of no other impediment in the
channel itself, throughout the great line of straits between Buffalo and
Chicago, which prudence and good seamanship, and well found vessels, may
not ordinarily surmount. The rapids at Black Rock, once so formidable,
have long been obviated by the canal dam. The straits of Detroit have
been well surveyed, and afford a deep, navigable channel at all times.
The rapids at the head of the river St. Clair, at Port Huron, have a
sufficiency of water for vessels of the largest class, and only require
a fair wind for their ascent.
The straits of Michilimackinac are believed to be on the same water
level as Lakes Huron and Michigan, and only present the phenomenon of a
current setting east or west, in compliance with certain laws of the
reaction of water driven by winds. Such are the slight impediments on
this extraordinary line of inland lake navigation, which is carried on
at an average altitude of something less than 600 feet above the tide
level of the Atlantic. When this line of commerce requires to be
diverted north, through the straits of St. Mary's into Lake Superior, a
period rapidly approaching, a short canal of three-fourths of a mile
will be required at the Sault Ste-Marie, and some excavation made, so as
to permit vessels of heavy tonnage to cross the bar in Lake George of
those straits.
X.
DUNDAS, Canada West, Oct. 26th, 1843.
Fortunately for the study of American antiquities the aborigines have,
from the earliest period, practised the interment of their arms,
utensils and ornaments, with the dead, thus furnishing evidence of the
particular state of their skill in the arts, at the respective eras of
their history. To a people without letters there could scarcely have
been a better index than such domestic monuments furnish, to determine
these eras; and it is hence that the examination of their mounds and
burial-places assumes so important a character in the investigation of
history. Heretofore these inquiries have been confined to portions of
the continent south and west of the great chain of lakes and the St.
Lawrence; but the advancing settlements in Canada, at this time, are
beginning to disclose objects of this kind, and thus enlarge the field
of inquiry.
I had, yesterday, quite an interesting excursion to one of these ancient
places of sepulture north of the head of Lake Ontario. The locality is
in the township of Beverly, about twelve miles distant from Dundas. The
rector of the parish, the Rev. Mr. McMurray, had kindly made
arrangements for my visit. We set out at a very early hour, on
horseback, the air being keen, and the mud and water in the road so
completely frozen as to bear our horses. We ascended the mountain and
passed on to the table land, about four miles, to the house of a worthy
parishioner of Mr. McM., by whom we were kindly welcomed, and after
giving us a warm breakfast, he took us on, with a stout team, about six
miles on the Guelph road. Diverging from this, about two miles to the
left, through a heavy primitive forest, with occasional clearings, we
came to the spot. It is in the 6th concession of Beverly.
We were now about seventeen miles, by the road, from the extreme head of
Lake Ontario, at the town of Hamilton, Burlington Bay; and on one of the
main branches of the bright and busy mill-stream of the valley of
Dundas. As this part of the country is yet encumbered with dense and
almost unbroken masses of trees, with roads unformed, we had frequently
to inquire our way, and at length stopped on the skirts of an elevated
beech ridge, upon which the trees stood as large and thickly as in
other parts of the forest. There was nothing at first sight to betoken
that the hand of man had ever been exercised there. Yet this wooded
ridge embraced the locality we were in quest of, and the antiquity of
interments and accumulations of human bones on this height is to be
inferred, from their occurrence amidst this forest, and beneath the
roots of the largest trees.
It is some five or six years since the discovery was made. It happened
from the blowing down of a large tree, whose roots laid bare a quantity
of human bones. Search was then made, and has been renewed at subsequent
times, the result of which has been the disclosure of human skeletons in
such abundance and massive quantities as to produce astonishment. This
is the characteristic feature. Who the people were, and how such an
accumulation should have occurred, are questions which have been often
asked. And the interest of the scene is by no means lessened on
observing that the greater part of these bones are deposited, not in
isolated and single graves as the Indians now bury, but in wide and long
trenches and rude vaults, in which the skeletons are piled
longitudinally upon each other. In this respect they resemble a single
deposit, mentioned in a prior letter, as occurring on _Isle Ronde_, in
Lake Huron. And they would appear, as is the case with the latter, to be
re-interments of bodies, after the flesh had decayed, collected from
their first places of sepulture.
No one--not the oldest inhabitant--remembers the residence of Indians in
this location, nor does there appear to be any tradition on the subject.
It is a common opinion among the settlers that there must have been a
great battle fought here, which would account for the accumulation, but
this idea does not appear to be sustained by an examination of the
skulls, which, so far as I saw, exhibit no marks of violence. Besides,
there are present the bones and crania of women and children, with
implements and articles of domestic use, such as are ordinarily
deposited with the dead. The supposition of pestilence, to account for
the number, is subject to less objection; yet, if admitted, there is no
imaginable state of Indian population in this quarter, which could have
produced such heaps. The trenches, so far as examined, extend over the
entire ridge. One of the transverse deposits, I judged, could not
include less than fifteen hundred square feet. The whole of this had
been once dug over, in search of curiosities, such as pipes, shells,
beads, &c., of which a large number were found. Among the evidences of
interments here since the discovery of Canada, were several brass
kettles, in one of which were five infant skulls.
Could we determine accurately the time required for the growth of a
beech, or a black oak, as they are found on these deposits, of sixteen,
eighteen and twenty inches and two feet in diameter, the date of the
abandonment or completion of the interments might be very nearly fixed.
The time of the growth of these species is, probably, much less, in the
temperate latitudes, and in fertile soils, than is commonly supposed. I
am inclined to think, from a hasty survey, that the whole deposit is the
result of the slow accumulation of both ordinary interment, and the
periodical deposit or re-interment of exhumed bones brought from
contiguous hunting camps and villages. To this, pestilence has probably
added. The ridge is said to be the apex or highest point of the table
lands, and would therefore recommend itself, as a place of general
interment, to the natives. Bands, who rove from place to place, and
often capriciously abandon their hunting villages, are averse to leaving
their dead in such isolated spots. The surrounding country is one which
must have afforded all the spontaneous means of Indian subsistence, in
great abundance. The deer and bear, once very numerous, still abound.
We passed some ancient beaver dams, and were informed that the country
east and north bears similar evidences of its former occupation by the
small furred animals. The occurrence of the sugar maple adds another
element of Indian subsistence. There are certain enigmatical walls of
earth, in this vicinity, which extend several miles across the country,
following the leading ridges of land. Accounts vary in representing them
to extend from five to eight miles. These I did not see, but learn that
they are about six feet high, and present intervals as if for gates.
There is little likelihood that these walls were constructed for
purposes of military defence, remote as they are from the great waters,
and aside from the great leading war-paths. It is far more probable that
they were intended to intercept the passage of game, and compel the deer
to pass through these artificial defiles, where the hunters lay in wait
for them.
Ancient Iroquois tradition, as preserved by Colden, represents this
section of Canada, extending quite to Three Rivers, as occupied by the
Adirondacks; a numerous, fierce, and warlike race, who carried on a
determined war against the Iroquois. The same race, who were marked as
speaking a different type of languages, were, at an early day, called by
the French by the general term of Algonquins. They had three chief
residences on the Utawas and its sources, and retired northwestwardly,
by that route, on the increase of the Iroquois power. Whoever the people
were who hunted and buried their dead at Beverly, it is manifest that
they occupied the district at and prior to the era of the discovery of
Canada, and also continued to occupy it, after the French had introduced
the fur trade into the interior. For we find, in the manufactured
articles buried, the distinctive evidences of both periods.
The antique bone beads, of which we raised many, _in situ_, with crania
and other bones, from beneath the roots of trees, are in every respect
similar to those found in the Grave Creek mound, which have been
improperly called "ivory." Amulets of bone and shell, and pipes of fine
steatite and indurated red clay, are also of this early period, and are
such as were generally made and used by the ancient inhabitants prior to
the introduction of European wrought wampum or seawan, and of beads of
porcelain and glass, and ornamented pipes of coarse pottery. I also
examined several large marine shells, much corroded and decayed, which
had been brought, most probably, from the shores of the Atlantic.
Having made such excavations as limited time and a single spade would
permit, we retraced our way to Dundas, which we reached after nightfall,
a little fatigued, but well rewarded in the examination of an object
which connects, in several particulars, the antiquities of Canada with
those of the United States.
ERA OF THE SETTLEMENT OF DETROIT, AND THE STRAITS BETWEEN LAKES ERIE AND
HURON.
The following papers, relative to the early occupancy of these straits,
were copied from the originals in the public archives in Paris, by Gen.
Cass, while he exercised the functions of minister at the court of
France. The first relates to an act of occupancy made on the banks of a
tributary of the Detroit river, called St. Deny's, probably the river
_Aux Canards_. The second coincides with the period usually assigned as
the origin of the post of Detroit. They are further valuable, for the
notice which is incidentally taken of the leading tribes, who were then
found upon these straits.
It will be recollected, in perusing these documents, that La Salle had
passed these straits on his way to "the Illinois," in 1679, that is,
_eight_ years before the act of possession at St. Deny's, and
_twenty-two_ years before the establishment of the post of Detroit. The
upper lakes had then, however, been extensively laid open to the
enterprise of the missionaries, and of the adventurers in the fur trade.
Marquette, accompanied by Alloez, had visited the south shore of Lake
Superior in 1668, and made a map of the region, which was published in
the _Lettres Edifiantes_. This zealous and energetic man established the
mission of St. Ignace at Michilimackinac, about 1669 or 1670, and three
years afterwards, entered the upper Mississippi, from the Wisconsin.
Vincennes, on the Wabash, was established in 1710;[27] St. Louis, not
till 1763.[28]
CANADA, 7th June, 1687.
_A renewal of the taking possession of the territory upon the Straits
[Detroit] between Lakes Erie and Huron, by Sieur de la Duranthaye._
_Oliver Morel, Equerry, Sieur de la Duranthaye, commandant in the name
of the King of the Territory of the Ottawas, Miamis, Pottawatamies,
Sioux, and other tribes under the orders of Monsieur, the Marquis de
Denonsville, Governor General of New France._
This day, the 7th of June, 1687, in presence of the Rev'd Father
Angeleran, Head of the Missions with the Ottawas[29] of Michilimackinac,
the Miamis of Sault Ste-Marie, the Illinois, and Green Bay, and of the
Sioux of Mons. de la Forest, formerly commandant of Fort St. Louis on
the Illinois, of Mons. de Lisle, our Lieutenant, and of Mons. de
Beauvais, Lieutenant of Fort St. Joseph, on the Straits [Detroit]
between Lakes Huron and Erie. We declare to all whom it may hereafter
concern, that we have come upon the banks of the river St. Deny's,
situated three leagues from Lake Erie, in the Straits of the said Lakes
Erie and Huron, on the south of said straits, and also at the entrance
on the north side, for and in the name of the King, that we re-take
possession of the said posts, established by Mons. La Salle for
facilitating the voyages he made or caused to be made in vessels from
Niagara to Michilimackinac, in the years * * * * * * at each of which we
have caused to be set up anew a staff, with the arms of the King, in
order to make the said renewed taking possession, and ordered several
cabins to be erected for the accommodation of the French and the Indians
of the Shawnees and Miamis, who had long been the proprietors of the
said territory, but who had some time before withdrawn from the same for
their greater advantage.
The present act passed in our presence, signed by our hands, and by Rev.
Father Angeleran, of the society of Jesuits, by MM. De la Forest, De
Lisle and De Beauvais, thus in the original:
Angeleran, Jesuite.
De la Duranthaye [la Garduer].
De Beauvais, and
De la Forest.
Compared by me with the original in my hands, Councillor Secretary of
the King, and Register in Chief of the Royal Council at Quebec,
subscribed, and each page _paraphe_.
Collated at Quebec, this 11th September, 1712.
[Signed],
BYON ET VANDREUIL.
* * * * *
_Memoir of Monsieur de la Mothe Cadillac, relative to the
establishment of Detroit, addressed to the Minister of Marine, 14th
September, 1704:_
_La Mothe Cadillac renders an account of his conduct relative to the
establishment of Detroit, by questions and answers. It is the
Minister who questions, and La Mothe who answers:_
Q. Was it not in 1699 that you proposed to me an establishment in the
Straits which separate Lake Erie from Lake Huron?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. What were the motives which induced you to wish to fortify a place
there, and make an establishment?
A. I had several. The first was to make a strong post, which should not
be subject to the revolutions of other posts, by fixing there a number
of French and Savages, in order to curb the Iroquois, who had constantly
annoyed our colonies and hindered their prosperity.
Q. At what time did you leave Quebec to go to Detroit?
A. On the 8th of March, 1701. I reached Montreal the 12th, when we were
obliged to make a change. * * * * I left La Chine the 5th of June with
fifty soldiers and fifty Canadians--Messrs. De Fonty, Captain, Duque and
Chacornach, Lieutenants. I was ordered to pass by the Grand River of the
Ottawas, notwithstanding my remonstrances. I arrived at Detroit _the
24th July_ and fortified myself there immediately; had the necessary
huts made, and cleared up the grounds, preparatory to its being sowed in
the autumn.
Compare these data, from the highest sources, with the Indian tradition
of the first arrival of the French, in the upper lakes, recorded at page
107, ONEOTA, No. 2.
THE CHOCTAW INDIANS.
The _Vicksburg Sentinel_ of the 18th ult., referring to this tribe of
Indians, has the following:--"The last remnant of this once powerful
tribe are now crossing our ferry on their way to their new homes in the
far West. To one who, like the writer, has been familiar to their bronze
inexpressive faces from infancy, it brings associations of peculiar
sadness to see them bidding here a last farewell perhaps to the old
hills which gave birth, and are doubtless equally dear to him and them
alike. The first playmates of our infancy were the young Choctaw boys of
the then woods of Warren county. Their language was once scarcely less
familiar to us than our mother-English. We know, we think, the character
of the Choctaw well. We knew many of their present stalwart braves in
those days of early life when the Indian and white alike forget
disguise, but in the unchecked exuberance of youthful feeling show the
real character that policy and habit may afterwards so much conceal; and
we know that, under the stolid stoic look he assumes, there is burning
in the Indian's nature a heart of fire and feeling, and an all-observing
keenness of apprehension, that marks and remembers everything that
occurs, and every insult he receives. Cunni-at a hah! They are going
away! With a visible reluctance which nothing has overcome but the stern
necessity they feel impelling them, they have looked their last on the
graves of their sires--the scenes of their youth--and have taken up
their slow toilsome march, with their household gods among them, to
their new home in a strange land. They leave names to many of our
rivers, towns and counties; and so long as our State remains, the
Choctaws, who once owned most of her soil, will be remembered."
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Nicollet's Report.
[28] Law's Historical Dis.
[29] This is, manifestly, an error. The writer of this act of possession
appears to have mistaken the bank of the St. Mary's, one of the
tributaries of the Miami of the Lakes, in the Miami country, for the
Sault de Ste-Marie, at the outlet of Lake Superior. The latter position
was occupied, at the earliest dates, to which tradition reaches, by a
branch of the Algonquins, to whom the French gave the name, from the
falls of the river at that locality, of _Saulteux_. They are better
known, at this day under the name of Chippewas and Odjibwas.
A SYNOPSIS OF CARTIER'S VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY AT NORTH AMERICA.
FIRST VOYAGE.
Forty-two years had elapsed from the discovery of America by Columbus,
when Jacques Cartier prepared to share in the maratime enterprise of the
age, by visiting the coast. Cartier was a native of Normandy, and sailed
from the port of St. Malo, in France, on the 20th April, 1534. It will
be recollected that the conquest of Mexico had been completed 13 years
previous. Cartier had two small vessels of 60 tons burden and 61 men
each. The crews took an oath, before sailing, "to behave themselves
truly and faithfully in the service of the most Christian king," Francis
I. After an unusually prosperous voyage of 20 days, he made cape "Buona
Vista" in Newfoundland, which he states to be in north latitude, 48°
30´. Here meeting with ice, he made the haven of St. Catherine's, where
he was detained ten days. This coast had now been known since the voyage
of Cabot, in 1497, and had been frequently resorted to, by fishing
vessels. Jean Denis, a native of Rouen, one of these fishermen, is said
to have published the first chart of it, in 1506. Two years after wards,
Thomas Aubert, brought the first natives from Newfoundland to Paris, and
this is the era, 1508, commonly assigned as the discovery of Canada. The
St. Lawrence remained, however, undiscovered, nor does it appear that
any thing was known, beyond a general and vague knowledge of the coast,
and its islands. The idea was yet entertained, indeed, it will be seen
by subsequent facts, that America was an island, and that a passage to
the Asiatic continent, existed in these latitudes.
On the 21st May, Cartier continued his voyage, sailing "north and by
east" from cape Buona Vista, and reached the Isle of Birds, so called
from the unusual abundance of sea fowl found there, of the young of
which the men filled two boats, "so that" in the quaint language of the
journal, "besides them which we did eat fresh, every ship did powder and
salt five or six barrels." He also observed the godwit, and a larger and
vicious bird, which they named margaulx. While at this island, they
descried a polar bear, which, in their presence leapt into the sea, and
thus escaped. On their subsequent passage to the main land, they again
encountered, as they supposed, the same animal swimming towards land.
They manned their boats, and "by main strength overtook her, whose flesh
was as good to be eaten, as the flesh of a calf two years old." This
bear is described to be, "as large as a cow, and as white as a swan."
On the 27th he reached the harbour of "Carpunt" in the bay "Les
Chastaux," latitude 51°, where he was constrained to lay by, on account
of the accumulation of ice, till the 9th of June. The narrator of the
voyage takes this occasion to describe certain parts of the coast and
waters of Newfoundland, the island of St. Catherine, Blanc Sablon,
Brest, the Isle of Birds, and a numerous group of Islands called the
Islets. But these memoranda are not connected with any observations or
discoveries of importance. Speaking of Bird and Brest Islands, he says,
they afford "great store of godwits, and crows, with red beaks and red
feet," who "make their nests in holes underground, even as conies." Near
this locality "there is great fishing."
On the 10th June, he entered a port in the newly named island of Brest,
to procure wood and water. Meantime, boats were dispatched to explore
among the islands, which were found so numerous "that it was not
possible they might be told, for they continued about 10 leagues beyond
the said port." The explorers slept on an island. The next day they
continued their discoveries along the coast, and having passed the
islands, found a haven, which they named St. Anthony: one or two leagues
beyond, they found a small river named St. Servansport, and here set up
a cross. About three leagues further, they discovered another river, of
larger size, in which they found salmon, and bestowed upon it the name
of St. Jacques.
While in the latter position, they descried a ship from Rochelle, on a
fishing voyage, and rowing out in their boats, directed it to a port
near at hand, in what is called "Jaques Cartier's Sound," "which," adds
the narrator, "I take to be one of the best, in all the world." The face
of the country they examined, is, however, of the most sterile and
forbidding character, being little besides "stones and wild crags, and a
place fit for wild beasts, for in all the North Island," he continues,
"I did not see a cart load of good earth, yet went I on shore, in many
places, and in the Island of White Sand, (Blanc Sablon,) there is
nothing else but moss and small thorns, scattered here and there,
withered and dry. To be short, I believe that this was the land that God
allotted to Cain."
Immediately following this, we have the first description of the
natives. The men are described as being "of an indifferent good stature
and bigness, but wild and unruly. They wear their hair tied on the top,
like a wreath of hay, and put a wooden pin within it, or any other such
thing, instead of a nail, and with them, they bind certain birds
feathers. They are clothed with beast skins, as well the men as women,
but that the women go somewhat straiter and closer in their garments,
than the men do, with their waists girded. They paint themselves with
certain roan colours; their boats are made of the bark of birch trees,
with the which they fish, and take great store of seals. And as far as
we could understand, since our coming thither, that is not their
habitation, but they come from the main land, out of _hotter_[30]
countries to catch the said seals, and other necessaries for their
living."
From this exploratory trip, the boats returned to their newly named
harbour of Brest, on the 13th. On the 14th, being the Sabbath, service
was read, and the next day Cartier continued his voyage, steering
southerly, along the coast, which still wore a most barren and cheerless
aspect. Much of this part of the narrative is taken up with distances
and soundings, and the naming of capes and islands of very little
interest at the present day. They saw a few huts upon the cliffs on the
18th, and named this part of the coast "Les Granges," but did not stop
to form any acquaintance with their tenants. Cape Royal was reached and
named the day prior, and is said to be the "greatest fishery of cods
there possibly may be, for in less than an hour we took a hundred of
them." On the 24th they discovered the island of St. John. They saw
myriads of birds upon the group of islands named "Margaulx," five
leagues westward of which they discovered a large, fertile, and
well-timbered island, to which the name of "Brion" was given. The
contrast presented by the soil and productions of this island, compared
with the bleak and waste shores they had before encountered, excited
their warm admiration; and with the aid of this excitement, they here
saw "wild corn," peas, gooseberries, strawberries, damask roses, and
parsley, "with other sweet and pleasant herbs." They here also saw the
walrus, bear, and wolf.
Very little is to be gleaned from the subsequent parts of the voyage,
until they reached the gulf of St. Lawrence. Mists, head winds, barren
rocks, sandy shores, storms and sunshine, alternately make up the
landscape presented to view. Much caution was evinced in standing off
and on an iron bound coast, and the boats were often employed in
exploring along the main land. While thus employed near a shallow
stream, called the "River of Boats," they saw natives crossing the
stream in their canoes, but the wind coming to blow on shore, they were
compelled to retire to their vessels, without opening any communication
with them. On the following day, while the boats were traversing the
coast, they saw a native running along shore after them, who made signs
as they supposed, directing them to return towards the cape they had
left. But as soon as the boat turned he fled. They landed, however, and
putting a knife and a woollen girdle on a staff, as a good-will
offering, returned to their vessels.
The character of this part of the Newfoundland coast, impressed them as
being greatly superior to the portions which they had previously seen,
both in soil and temperature. In addition to the productions found at
Brion's Island, they noticed cedars, pines, white elm, ash, willow, and
what are denominated "ewe-trees." Among the feathered tribes they
mention the "thrush and stock-dove." By the latter term the passenger
pigeon is doubtless meant. The "wild corn" here again mentioned, is said
to be "like unto rye," from which it may be inferred that it was the
zizania, although the circumstance of its being an aquatic plant is not
mentioned.
In running along the coast Cartier appears to have been engrossed with
the idea, so prevalent among the mariners of that era, of finding a
passage to India, and it was probably on this account that he made such
a scrupulous examination of every inlet and bay, and the productions of
the shores. Wherever the latter offered anything favourable, there was a
strong disposition to admiration, and to make appearances correspond
with the theory. It must be recollected that Hudson, seventy-five years
later, in sailing up the North River, had similar notions. Hence the
application of several improper terms to the vegetable and animal
productions of the latitudes, and the constant expectation of beholding
trees bending with fruits and spices, "goodly trees" and "very sweet and
pleasant herbs." That the barren and frigid shores of Labrador, and the
northern parts of Newfoundland, should have been characterised as a
region subject to the divine curse, is not calculated to excite so much
surprise, as the disposition with every considerable change of soil and
verdure, to convert it into a land of oriental fruitfulness. It does not
appear to have been sufficiently borne in mind, that the increased
verdure and temperature, were, in a great measure, owing to the
advancing state of the season. He came on this coast on the 10th of May,
and it was now July. It is now very well known that the summers in high
northern latitudes, although short, are attended with a high degree of
heat.
On the 3d of July Cartier entered the gulf to which the name of St.
Lawrence has since been applied, the centre of which he states to be in
latitude 47° 30´. On the 4th he proceeded up the bay to a creek called
St. Martin, near bay De Chaleur, where he was detained by stress of
weather eight days. While thus detained, one of the ship's boats was
sent a-head to explore. They went 7 or 8 leagues to a cape of the bay,
where they descried two parties of Indians, "in about 40 or 50 canoes,"
crossing the channel. One of the parties landed and beckoned them to
follow their example, "making a great noise" and showing "certain skins
upon pieces of wood"--i. e. fresh stretched skins. Fearing their
numbers, the seamen kept aloof. The Indians prepared to follow them, in
two canoes, in which movement they were joined by five canoes of the
other party, "who were coming from the sea side." They approached in a
friendly manner, "dancing and making many signs of joy, saying in their
tongue Nape tondamen assuath."[31] The seamen, however, suspected their
intentions, and finding it impossible to elude them by flight, two shots
were discharged among them, by which they were so terrified, that they
fled precipitately ashore, "making a great noise." After pausing awhile,
the "wild men" however, re-embarked, and renewed the pursuit, but after
coming alongside, they were frightened back by the strokes of two
lances, which so disconcerted them that they fled in haste, and made no
further attempt to follow.
This appears to have been the first rencontre of the ship's crew with
the natives. On the following day, an interview was brought on, by the
approach of said "wild men" in nine canoes, which is thus described. "We
being advertised of their coming, went to the point where they were with
our boats; but so soon as they saw us they began to flee, making signs
that they came to traffic with us, showing us such skins as they clothed
themselves withal, which are of small value. We likewise made signs unto
them, that we wished them no evil, and in sign thereof, two of our men
ventured to go on land to them, and carry them knives, with other iron
wares, and a red hat to give unto their captain. Which, when they saw,
they also came on land, and brought some of their skins, and so began to
deal with us, seeming to be very glad to have our iron wares and other
things, dancing, with many other ceremonies, as with their hands to cast
sea water on their heads. They gave us whatever they had, not keeping
any thing, so that they were constrained to go back again naked, and
made us signs, that the next day, they would come again and bring more
skins with them."
Observing a spacious bay extending beyond the cape, where this
intercourse had been opened, and the wind proving adverse to the vessels
quitting their harbour, Cartier despatched his boats to examine it,
under an expectation that it might afford the desired passage--for it is
at all times to be observed that he was diligently seeking the long
sought passage to the Indies. While engaged in this examination, his men
discovered "the smokes and fires" of "wild men" (the term constantly
used in the narrative to designate the natives.) These smokes were upon
a small lake, communicating with the bay. An amiable interview took
place, the natives presenting cooked seal, and the French making a
suitable return "in hatchets, knives and beads." After these
preliminaries, which were conducted with a good deal of caution, by
deputies from both sides, the body of the men approached in their
canoes, for the purpose of trafficking, leaving most of their families
behind. About 300 men women and children were estimated to have been
seen at this place. They evinced their friendship by singing and
dancing, and by rubbing their hands upon the arms of their European
visitors, then lifting them up towards the heavens. An opinion is
expressed that these people, (who were in the position assigned to the
Micmacs in 1600 in Mr. Gallatin's ethnological map,) might very easily
be converted to Christianity. "They go," says the narrator, "from place
to place. They live only by fishing. They have an ordinary time to fish
for their provisions. The country is _hotter_ than the country of Spain,
and the fairest that can possibly be found, altogether smooth and
level." To the productions before noticed, as existing on Brion's island
&c., and which were likewise found here, he adds, "white and red roses,
with many other flowers of very sweet and pleasant smell." "There be
also," says the journalist, "many goodly meadows, full of grass, and
lakes, wherein plenty of salmon be." The natives called a hatchet
_cochi_, and a knife _bacon_.[32] It was now near the middle of July,
and the degree of heat experienced on the excursion induced Cartier to
name the inlet, Baie du Chaleur--a name it still retains.
On the 12th of July Cartier left his moorings at St. Martin's creek, and
proceeded up the gulf, but encountering bad weather he was forced into a
bay, which appears to have been Gaspe, where one of the vessels lost her
anchor. They were forced to take shelter in a river of that bay, and
there detained thirteen days. In the mean while they opened an
intercourse with the natives, who were found in great numbers engaged in
fishing for makerel. Forty canoes, and 200 men women and children were
estimated to have been seen, during their detention. Presents of
"knives, combs, beads of glass, and other trifles of small value," were
made to them, for which they expressed great thankfulness, lifting up
their hands, and dancing and singing.
These Gaspe Indians are represented as differing, both in nature and
language, from those before mentioned. They presented a picture of
abject poverty, were partially clothed in "old skins," and lived without
the use of tents. They may, says the journalist, "very well and truly be
called _wild_, because there is no poorer people in the world, for I
think, all they had together, besides their boats and nets, was not
worth five sous." They shaved their heads, except a tuft at the crown;
sheltered themselves at night under their canoes on the bare ground, and
ate their provisions very partially cooked. They were wholly without the
use of salt, and "ate nothing that had any taste of salt." On Cartier's
first landing among them, the men expressed their joy, as those at bay
Chaleur had done, by singing and dancing. But they had caused all their
women, except 2 or 3, to flee into the woods. By giving a comb and a
tin bell to each of the women who had ventured to remain, the avarice of
the men was excited, and they quickly caused their women, to the number
of about 20, to sally from the woods, to each of whom the same present
was made. They caressed Cartier by touching and rubbing him with their
hands; they also sung and danced. Their nets were made of a species of
indigenous hemp; they possessed also, a kind of "millet" called
"kapaige," beans called "Sahu," and nuts called "Cahehya." If any thing
was exhibited, which they did not know, or understand, they shook their
heads saying "Nohda." It is added that they never come to the sea,
except in fishing time, which, we may remark, was probably the cause of
their having no lodges, or much other property about them. They would
naturally wish to disencumber their canoes as much as possible, in these
summer excursions, that they might freight them back with dried fish.
The language spoken by these Gaspe Indians is manifestly of the Iroquois
type. "Cahehya," is, with a slight difference, the term for fruit, in
the Oneida.
On the 24th July, Cartier set up a cross thirty feet high, inscribed,
"_Vive le Roy de France_." The natives who were present at this
ceremony, seem, on a little reflection, to have conceived the true
intent of it, and their chief complained of it, in a "long oration,"
giving them to understand "that the country was his, and that we should
not set up any cross, without his leave." Having quieted the old chief's
fears, and made use of a little duplicity, to get him to come alongside,
they seized two of the natives for the purpose of taking them to France,
and on the next day set sail, up the gulf. After making some further
examinations of the gulf, and being foiled in an attempt to enter the
mouth of a river, Cartier turned his thoughts on a return. He was
alarmed by the furious tides setting out of the St. Lawrence; the
weather was becoming tempestuous, and under these circumstances he
assembled his captains and principal men, "to put the question as to the
expediency of continuing the voyage." They advised him to this effect:
That, considering that easterly winds began to prevail--"that there was
nothing to be gotten"--that, the impetuosity of the tides was such "That
they did but fall," and that storms and tempests began to reign--and
moreover, that they must either promptly return home, or else remain
where they were till spring, it was expedient to return. With this
counsel he complied. No time was lost in retracing their outward track,
along the Newfoundland coast. They reached the port of "White Sands," on
the 9th of August. On the 15th, being "the feast of the Assumption of
Our Lady," after service, Cartier took his departure from the coast. He
encountered a heavy storm, of three days continuance, "about the middle
of the sea," and reached the port of St. Malo, on the 5th of September,
after an absence of four months and sixteen days.
This comprises the substance of the first voyage of discovery, of which
we have knowledge, ever made within the waters of the St. Lawrence. The
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia coasts, together with the shores of the
North Atlantic generally, had been discovered by Cabot, 37 years before.
The banks of Newfoundland had been resorted to, as is known pretty
freely for the purpose of fishing, for 26 years of this period, and the
natives had been at least, in one instance, taken to Europe. But the
existence of the St. Lawrence appears not to have been known. Cartier,
is, therefore, the true discoverer of Canada, although he was not its
founder. The latter honour was reserved for another. In the two
succeeding voyages made by Cartier, of which it is proposed to make a
synopsis, his title as a discoverer, is still more fully established.
SECOND VOYAGE.
A. D. 1535, May, 19th, Cartier left St. Malo, on his second voyage of
discovery, "to the islands of Canada, Hochelaga, and Saguenay," with
three ships--the "Hermina" of 100 to 120 tons--the "little Hermina" of
60 tons, and the "Hermerillon" of 40 tons, commanded by separate
masters, acting under his orders as "General." He was accompanied by
several gentlemen and adventurers, among whom the narrator of the voyage
mentions, "Master Claudius de Pont Briand, son to the Lord of
Montceuell, and cup-bearer to the Dauphin of France; Charles of
Pomerais, and John Powlet." He suffered a severe gale on the outward
passage, in which the ships parted company. Cartier reached the coast of
Newfoundland on the 7th July, and was not rejoined by the other vessels
till the 26th, on which day the missing vessels entered "the port of
White Sands" in the _bay des Chasteaux_, the place previously designated
for their general rendezvous.
On the 27th he continued his voyage along the coast, keeping in sight of
land, and consequently running great risks, from the numerous shoals he
encountered in seeking out anchorages. Many of the islands and headlands
named in the previous voyage, were observed, and names were bestowed
upon others, which had before escaped notice. Soundings and courses and
distances, are detailed with the tedious prolixity, and probably, with
the uncertainty of the era. Nothing of importance occurred until the 8th
of August, when Cartier entered the gulf, where he had previously
encountered such storms, and which he now named ST. LAWRENCE. From
thence on the 12th, he pursued his voyage westward "about 25 leagues" to
a cape named "Assumption," which appears to have been part of the Nova
Scotia coast. It is quite evident that the idea of a continuous
continent was not entertained by Cartier at this period, although the
Cabots had discovered and run down the coast nearly 40 years before
(1497.) He constantly speaks of his discoveries as "islands" and the
great object of anxiety seems to have been, to find the long sought
"passage" so often mentioned in his journals.
The two natives whom he had seized on the previous voyage, now told him,
that cape Assumption was a part of the "southern coast," or main,--that
there was an island north of the passage to "Honguedo" where they had
been taken the year before, and that "two days journey from, the said
cape, and island, began the kingdom of Saguenay."
In consequence of this information, and a wish to revisit "the land he
had before espied," Cartier turned his course towards the north, and
reentering the Gulf of St. Lawrence, came to the entrance of the river,
which is stated to be "about thirty leagues" across. Here, the two
natives told him, was the commencement of "Saguenay,"--that it was an
inhabited country, and produced "red copper." They further informed him,
that this was the mouth of the "great river of Hochelaga, and ready way
to Canada,"--that it narrowed in the ascent towards Canada, the waters
becoming fresh; that its sources were so remote that they had never
heard of any man who had visited them, and that boats would be required
to complete the ascent.
This information appears to have operated as a disappointment on
Cartier, and he determined to explore northward from the gulf, "because
he would know" to use the quaint language of the narrator, "if between
the lands towards the north any passage might be discovered." No such
passage could however be found, and after devoting ten or twelve days to
re-examinations of points and islands before but imperfectly discovered,
or to the discovery of others, he returned to the river St. Lawrence,
which he began to ascend: and on the 1st Sept. he came to the entrance
of the Saguenay river, which is described as a bold and deep stream,
entering the St. Lawrence, between bare, precipitous rocks, crowned with
trees. Here they encountered four canoes of Indians, who evinced their
characteristic caution and shyness. On being hailed, however, by the two
captive natives, who disclosed to them, their names, they came along
side. But the journal records no further particulars of this interview.
They proceeded up the river next day. The tides are noticed as being
"very swift and dangerous," and the "current" is described as equalling
that at Bordeaux. Many tortoises were seen at the "Isle of Condres," and
a species of fish, which are described of equalling a porpoise in size,
with a head resembling a greyhound's, and of unspotted whiteness. It may
be vague to offer a conjecture from such a description as to the species
of fish intended, but as the natives reported them to be "very savoury
and good to be eaten," it may be inferred, that the sturgeon was meant.
Many of the descriptions of the animal productions of America, given by
Cartier, appear to be drawn up, rather with a view to excite wonder, in
an age when wonders were both industriously sought, and readily
credited, than to convey any accurate idea of their true characters and
properties.
On the 7th of Sept they reached the island now called Orleans, where, it
is said "the country of Canada beginneth." This island is stated to be
ten leagues long, and five broad, being inhabited by natives who lived
exclusively by fishing. Having anchored his vessels in the channel, he
made a formal landing in his boats, taking the two captives, Domaigaia,
and Taignoagny, as interpreters. The natives at first fled, but hearing
themselves addressed in their own tongue, and finding the captives to be
their own countrymen, friendly intercourse at once ensued. The natives
evinced their joy by dancing, and "showing many sorts of ceremonies."
They presented Cartier, "eels and other sorts of fishes, with two or
three burdens of great millet, wherewith they make their bread, and many
great mush mellons." This "great millet" appears to have been _zea
mais_, which is here for the first time noticed, amongst the northern
Indians. The report of the arrival of their lost countrymen D. and T.
seemed to have put all the surrounding villages in commotion, and
Cartier found himself thronged with visitors, to whom he gave presents,
trifling in themselves, but of much value in the eyes of the Indians.
The utmost harmony and good feeling appear to have prevailed.
On the following day Donnacona, who is courteously styled the Lord of
Agouhanna, visited the ships, with 12 boats, or canoes--ten of which
however, he directed to stay at a distance, and with the other two and
16 men approached the vessels. A friendly conference ensued. The chief,
when he drew near the headmost vessel began "to frame a long oration,
moving all his body and members after a strange fashion." When he
reached Cartier's ship, the captives entered into free discourse with
him, imparting the observations they had made in France, and the kind
treatment they had experienced. At this recital Donnacona was so much
pleased, that he desired Cartier to reach him his arm, that he might
kiss it. He not only kissed it, but "laid it about his neck, for so they
use to do, when they will make much of one." Cartier then entered into
the chief's boat, "causing bread and wine to be brought," and after
eating and drinking with him and his followers, the interview terminated
in mutual satisfaction.
The advanced state of the season, and the determination to visit
Hochelaga (now Montreal) before the ice formed, admonished Cartier to
look for a harbour, which would afford a safe anchorage for his largest
vessels during the winter. He selected "a little river and haven,"
opposite the head of the island, to which he gave the name of "Santa
Croix," being in the vicinity of Donnacona's village. No time was lost
in bringing up and mooring the vessels, and driving piles into the
harbour for their better security. While engaged in this work, further
acquaintance was made with the natives, and their opinion of Cartier's
visit, began to manifest itself, by which it appeared, that the
friendship established with him was rather apparent, than real. About
this time Taignoagny and Domaigaia were suffered to return to their
villages, and it soon became apparent, that the knowledge they had
acquired of the French, would be wielded to put their countrymen on
their guard against encroachments upon their soil. Taignoagny, in
particular, rendered himself obnoxious to the French, by his sullen and
altered conduct, and the activity he afterwards manifested in thwarting
Cartier's design of visiting the island of Hochelaga, although it
appears, he had, previous to leaving the vessels, promised to serve as a
guide on the expedition.