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Descendant of one spared at the massacre of St.
Bartholomew's--Death of Gen. Clarke--Massacre of Peurifoy's family
in Florida--Gen. Harrison's historical discourse--Death of an
emigrant on board a steamboat--Murder of an Indian--History of
Mackinack--Incidents of the treaty of 29th July, 1837--Mr. Fleming's
account of the missionaries leaving Georgia, and of the improvements
of the Indians west--Death of Black Hawk--Incidents of his life and
character--Dreadful cruelty of the Pawnees in burning a female
captive--Cherokee emigration--Phrenology--Return to
Detroit--University--Indian affairs--Cherokee removal--Indians shot
at Fort Snelling.
1838. Sept. 20th, COUNT CASTLENEAU, a French gentleman on
his travels in America, brings me a note of introduction from a
friend. I was impressed with his suavity of manners, and the
interest he manifested in natural history, and furnished him some of
our characteristic northern specimens in mineralogy. I understood
him to say, in some familiar conversation, that he was the
descendant of a child saved accidentally at the memorable massacre
of St. Bartholomew's; and suppose, of course, that he is of
Protestant parentage.
21st. The St. Louis papers are dressed in mourning, on
account of the death of Gen. William Clarke. Few men have acted a
more distinguished part in the Indian history of the country. He was
widely known and respected by the Indians on the prairies, who sent
in their delegations to him with all the pomp and pride of so many
eastern Rajahs. Gen. Clarke was, I believe, the second territorial
governor of Missouri, an office which he held until it became a
state, when Congress provided the office of Superintendent of Indian
Affairs for him. He contributed largely, by his enterprise and
knowledge, to the prosperity of the west. The expedition which he
led, in conjunction with Capt. Meriwether Lewis, across the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific, in 1805 and 1806, first opened the way to
the consideration of its resources and occupancy. Without that
expedition, Oregon would have been a foreign province.
24th. Letters from Florida indicate the war with the
Seminoles to be lingering, without reasonable expectation of
bringing it soon to a close. Etha Emathla, however, the chief of the
Tallasees, is daily expected to come in, his children being already
arrived, and he has promised to bring in his people.
But what a war of details, which are harassing to the troops, whose
action is paralyzed in a maze of swamps and morasses; and how many
scenes has it given birth to which are appalling to the heart! A
recent letter from a Mr. T.D. Peurifoy, Superintendent of the
Alachua Mission, describes a most shocking murder in his own family,
communicated to him at first by letter:--
"It informed me," he says, "that the Indians had murdered my family!
I set out for home, hoping that it might not prove as bad as the
letter stated; but, O my God, it is even worse! My precious
children, Corick, Pierce and Elizabeth, were killed and burned up in
the house. My dear wife was stabbed, shot, and stamped, seemingly to
death, in the yard. But after the wretches went to pack up their
plunder, she revived and crawled off from the scene of death, to
suffer a thousand deaths during the dreadful night which she spent
alone by the side of a pond, bleeding at four bullet holes and more
than half a dozen stabs--three deep gashes to the bone on her head
and three stabs through the ribs, besides a number of small cuts and
bruises. She is yet living; and O, help me to pray that she may yet
live! My negroes lay dead all about the yard and woods, and my
everything else burned to ashes."
Oct. 1st. Mr. Palfrey, Editor of the North American Review,
requests me (Sept. 20th) to notice Gen. Harrison's late discourse on
the aboriginal history, delivered before the Ohio Historical
Society. The difficulty in all these cares is to steer clear of some
objectional theory. To the General, the Delawares have appeared to
play the key-note. But it has not fallen to his lot, while bearing a
distinguished part in Indian affairs in the west, to examine their
ancient history with much attention.
The steamer Madison arrived with a crowd of emigrants for the west,
one of whom had died on the passage from Detroit. It proved to be a
young man named Jesse Cummings, from Groton, N.H., a member of the
Congregational Church of that place. Having no pastor, I conducted
the religious observance of the funeral, and selected a spot for his
burial, in a high part of the Presbyterian burial ground, towards
the N.E., where a few loose stones are gathered to mark the place.
2d. Wakazo, a chief, sent to tell me that an Ottawa Indian,
Ishquondaim's son, had killed a Chippewa called Debaindung, of
Manistee River. Both had been drinking. I informed him that an
Indian killing an Indian on a reserve, where the case occurred,
which is still "Indian country," did not call for the interposition
of our law. Our criminal Indian code, which is defective, applies
only to the murder of white men killed in the Indian country. So
that justice for a white man and an Indian is weighed in two scales.
3d. Mrs. Therese Schindler, a daughter of a former factor of
the N.W. Company at Mackinack, visited the office. I inquired her
age. She replied 63, which would give the year 1775 as her birth.
Having lived through a historical era of much interest, on this
island, and possessing her faculties unimpaired, I obtained the
following facts from her. The British commanding officers remembered
by her were Sinclair, Robinson, and Doyle. The interpreters acting
under them, extending to a later period, were Charles Gothier,
Lamott, Charles Chabollier, and John Asken. The first interpreter
here was Hans, a half-breed, and father to the present chief Ance,
of Point St. Ignace. His father had been a Hollander, as the name
implies. Longlade was the interpreter at old Fort Mackinack, on the
main, at the massacre. She says she recollects the transference of
the post to the island. If so, that event could not have happened,
so as to be recollected by her, till about 1780. Asken went along
with the British troops on the final surrender of the island to the
Americans in 1796, and returned in the surprise and taking of the
island in 1812.
5th. Finished my report on a resolution of Congress of March
19th respecting the interference of the British Indian Department in
the Indian affairs of the frontier. The treaty of Ghent terminated
the war between Great Britain and the United States, but it did not
terminate the feelings and spirit with which the Indian tribes had,
from the fall of their French power regarded them.
Mr. Warren (Lyman M.), of La Pointe, Lake Superior, visited the
office. Having been long a trader in the north, and well acquainted
with Indian affairs in that quarter, I took occasion to inquire into
the circumstances of the cession of the treaty of the 29th of July,
1837, and asked him why it was that so little had been given for so
large a cession, comprehending the very best lands of the Chippewas
in the Mississippi Valley. He detailed a series of petty intrigues
by the St. Peter's agent, who had flattered two of the Pillager
chiefs, and loaded them with new clothes and presents. One of these,
Hole-in-the-Day, came down twenty days before the time. The
Pillagers, in fact, made the treaty. The bands of the St. Croix and
Chippewa Rivers, who really lived on the land and owned it, had, in
effect, no voice. So with respect to the La Pointe Indians. He
stated that Gen. Dodge really knew nothing of the fertility and
value of the country purchased, having never set foot on it.
Governor Dodge thought the tract chiefly valuable for its pine, and
natural mill-power; and there was no one to undeceive him. He had
been authorized to offer $1,300; but the Chippewas managed
badly--they knew nothing of thousands, or how the annuity
would divide among so many, and were, in fact, cowed down by the
braggadocia of the flattered Pillager war chief, Hole-in-the-Day.
Mr. Warren stated that the Lac Courtorielle band had not
united in the sale, and would not attend the payment of the
annuities; nor would the St. Croix and Lac du Flambeau Indians. He
said the present of $19,000 would not exceed a breech-cloth and a
pair of leggins apiece. I have not the means of testing these facts,
but have the highest confidence in the character, sense of justice,
and good natural judgment of Gov. Dodge. He may have been ill
advised of some facts. The Pillagers certainly do not, I think, as a
band, own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the Mississippi below
Sandy Lake, but their warlike character has a sensible influence on
those tribes, quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers. The
sources of these rivers are valuable only for their pineries, and
their valleys only become fertile below their falls and principal
rapids.
From Mr. Warren's statements, the sub-agencies of Crow-wing River
and La Pointe have been improperly divided by a longitudinal
instead of a latitudinal line, by which it happens that the
St. Croix and Chippewa River Indians are required to travel from 200
to 350 miles up the Mississippi, by all its falls and rapids, to
Crow-wing River, to get their pay. The chief, Hole-in-the-Day,
referred to, was one of the most hardened, blood-thirsty wretches of
whom I have ever heard. Mr. Aitkin, the elder, told me that having
once surprised and killed a Sioux family, the fellow picked up a
little girl, who had fled from the lodge, and pitched her into the
Mississippi. The current bore her against a point of land. Seeing
it, the hardened wretch ran down and again pushed her in.
8th. The Rev. Mr. Fleming and the Rev. Mr. Dougherty arrived
as missionaries under the Presbyterian Board at New York. Mr.
Fleming stated that he had been one of the expelled missionaries
from the Creek country, Georgia. That he had labored four years
there, under the American Board of Commissioners, and had learned
the Creek language so as to preach in it, by first writing
his discourse. The order to have the missionaries quit the Creek
country was given by Capt. Armstrong (now Act. Supt. Western
Territory), who then lived at the Choctaw agency, sixty miles off,
and was sudden and unexpected. He went to see him for the purpose of
refuting the charges, but found Gen. Arbuckle there, as acting
agent, who told him that, in Capt. Armstrong's absence, he had
nothing to do but to enforce the order.
Mr. Fleming said that he had since been in the Indian country, west,
in the region of the Osage, &c., and spoke highly in favor of the
fertility of the country, and the advanced state of the Indians who
had emigrated. He said the belt of country immediately west of
Missouri State line, was decidedly the richest in point of natural
fertility in the region. That there was considerable wood on the
streams, and of an excellent kind, namely: hickory, hackberry,
cottonwood, cypress, with blackjack on the hills, which made
excellent fire-wood.
As an instance of the improvement made by the Indians in their
removal, he said that the first party of Creeks who went west,
immediately after Mackintosh's Treaty, were the most degraded
Indians in Georgia; but that recently, on the arrival of the large
body of Creeks at the west, they found their brethren in the
possession of every comfort, and decidedly superior to them. He said
that the Maumee Ottawas, so besotted in their habits on leaving
Ohio, had already improved; were planting; had given up drink, and
listened to teachers of the Gospel. He spoke of the Shawnese as
being in a state of enviable advancement, &c.
11th. First frost at Mackinack for the season.
A friend at Detroit writes: "The Rev. Mr. Duffield (called as pastor
here) preached last Sabbath. In the morning, when he finished, there
was scarce a dry eye in the house. He excels in the pathetic--his
voice and whole manner being suited to that style. He is
clear-headed, and has considerable power of illustration, though
different from Mr. Cleaveland. I like him much on first hearing."
13th. Finished grading and planting trees in front of the
dormitory.
12th. The Iowa Gazette mentions the death of Black
Hawk, who was buried, agreeably to his own request, by being placed
on the surface of the earth, in a sitting posture, with his cane
clenched in his hands. His body was then enclosed with palings, and
the earth filled in. This is said to be the method in which Sac
chiefs are usually buried. The spectacle of his sepulchre was
witnessed by many persons who were anxious to witness the last
resting place of a man who had made so much noise and disturbance.
He was 71 years of age, having, by his own account, published in
1833, been born in the Sac village on Rock River, in 1767--the year
of the death of Pontiac. In his indomitable enmity to the (American
type of the) Anglo-Saxon race, he was animated with the spirit
of this celebrated chief, and had some of his powers of combination.
His strong predilections for the British Government were undoubtedly
fostered by the annual visits of his tribe to the depot of Malden.
His denial of the authority of the men who, in 1804, sold the Sac
and Fox country, east of the Mississippi, may have had the sanction
of his own judgment, but without it he would have found it no
difficult matter to hatch up a cause of war with the United States.
That war seems to have been brooded over many years: it had been the
subject of innumerable war messages to the various tribes, a large
number of whom had favored his views. And when it broke out in the
spring of 1832, the suddenness of the movement, the great cruelties
of the onset, and the comparatively defenceless state of the
frontier, gave it all its alarming power. As soon as the army could
be got to the frontiers, and the Indian force brought to action, the
contest was over. The battle of the Badaxe annihilated his forces,
and he was carried a prisoner to Washington. But he was more to be
respected and pitied than blamed. His errors were the result of
ignorance, and none of the cruelties of the war were directly
chargeable to him. He was honest in his belief--honest in the
opinion that the country east of the Mississippi had been unjustly
wrested from him; and there is no doubt but the trespasses and
injuries received from the reckless frontier emigrants were of a
character that provoked retaliation. He has been compared, in some
things, to Pontiac. Like him, he sought to restore his people to a
position and rights, which he did not perceive were inevitably lost.
He possessed a degree of intellectual vigor and decision of
character far beyond the mass, and may be regarded as one of the
principal minds of the Indians of the first half of the 19th
century.
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Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the
Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, 1851
Thirty
Years with the Indians |
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