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Rage for investment in western lands--Habits of the common
deer--Question of the punishment of Indian murders committed in the
Indian country--A chief calls to have his authority recognized on
the death of a predecessor--Dr. Julius, of Prussia--Gen. Robert
Patterson--Pressure of emigration--Otwin--Dr. Gilman and Mr.
Hoffman--Picturesque trip to Lake Superior--Indians desire to cede
territory--G.W. Featherstonehaugh--Sketch of his geological
reconnoisance of the St. Peter's River--Dr. Thomas H. Webb--Question
of inscriptions on American rocks--Antiquities--Embark for
Washington, and come down the lakes in the great tempest of 1835.
1835. August. The rage for investment in lands was now
manifest in every visitor that came from the East to the West.
Everybody, more or less, yielded to it. I saw that friends, in whose
prudence and judgment I had confided for years, were engaged in it.
I doubted the soundness of the ultra predictions which were based on
every sort of investment of this kind, whether of town property or
farming land, and held quite conservative opinions on the subject,
but yielded partially, and in a moderate way, to the general
impulse, by making some investments in Wisconsin. Among other plans,
an opinion arose that Michilimackinack must become a favorite
watering place, or refuge for the opulent and invalids during the
summer; and lots were eagerly bought up from Detroit and Chicago.
17th. I embarked in a steamer for Green Bay--where I attended
the first land sales, and made several purchases. While there, I
remarked the curious fluctuations in the level of the waters at the
mouth of Fox River. The lake (Michigan) and the bay appear to hold
the relation of separate parts of a syphon. It was now fourteen
years since I had first noticed this phenomenon, as a member of the
expedition to the sources of the Mississippi. While at Green Bay I
procured a young fawn, and carried it to be a tenant of my garden
and grounds. This animal grew to its full size, and revealed many
interesting traits. Its motions were most graceful. It was perfectly
tame. It would walk into the hall and dining-room, when the door was
open, and was once observed to step up, gracefully, and take bread
from the table. It perambulated the garden walks. It would, when the
back-gate was shut, jump over a six feet picket fence, with the ease
and lightness of a bird.
Some of its instincts were remarkable. At night it would choose its
place of lying down invariably to the leeward of an object which
sheltered it from the prevailing wind. One of its most remarkable
instincts was developed with respect to ladies. On one occasion,
while an unattended lady was walking up the avenue from my front
gate to the door, through the garden grounds, the animal approached
from behind, in the gentlest manner possible, and placed his fore
feet on her shoulders. This happened more than once. Its propensity
to eat plum leaves at last banished it from the garden. It was then
allowed to visit distant parts of the island, and, at length, some
vicious person broke one of its legs, from its propensity to browse
on the young leaves of fruit trees. This was fatal to it, and I was
induced to allow its being shot, after it had been an inmate of my
grounds for about three years, where it was familiarly known to all
by the name of Nimmi.
Poor Nimmi, some are hanged for being thieves,
But thou, poor beast! wast killed for eating leaves.
24th. I received instructions from Washington respecting
recent murders of Chippewas by the Sioux. This is a constantly
recurring topic for the action of an Indian agent. Unfortunately,
his powers in the matter are only advisory. The intercourse act does
not declare it a crime for one Indian nation to make reprisals, club
in hand, on another Indian nation, on the area in which their
sovereignty is acknowledged. It only makes it a criminal offence to
kill a white man in such a position, for which his nation can be
invaded, and the murderer seized and delivered up to justice.
28th. Ottawance, chief of the Beaver Islands, died last
summer (1834). Kin-wa-be-kiz-ze, or Man of the Long Stone (noun
inanimate), called to day, and announced himself as the successor,
and asked for the usual present of tobacco, &c. By this recognition
of the office, his authority was sought to be confirmed.
29th. Dr. Julius, of Prussia, visited me, being on his return
from Chicago. He evinced a deep interest in the history of the
Indian race. He remarked the strong resemblance they bore in
features and manners to the Asiatics. He had remarked that the
Potawattomies seem like dogs, which he observed was also the custom
of the Tartars; but that the eyes of the latter were set diagonally,
whereas the American Indians had theirs parallel. In other respects,
he saw great resemblances. He expressed himself as greatly
interested in the discovery of an oral literature among the Indians,
in the form of imaginative legends.
Gen. Robert Patterson, of Philadelphia, with his daughter and niece,
make a brief visit, on their way from Chicago and the West, and view
the curiosities of the island. These visits of gentlemen of wealth,
to the great area of the upper lakes, may be noticed as commencing
with this year. People seem to have suddenly waked up in the East,
and are just becoming aware that there is a West--to which
they hie, in a measure, as one who hunts for a pleasant land fancied
in dreams. But the great Mississippi Valley is a waking reality.
Fifty years will tell her story on the population and resources of
the world.
Sept. 12th. Received instructions from the Department, to
ascertain whether the Indians north of Grand River would sell their
lands, and on what terms. The letter to which this was a reply was
the first official step in the causes which led to the treaty of
March 28th, 1836. A leading step in the policy of the Department
respecting the tribes of the Upper Lakes.
15th. The great lakes can no longer be regarded as solitary
seas, where the Indian war-whoop has alone for so many uncounted
centuries startled its echoes. The Eastern World seems to be alive,
and roused up to the value of the West. Every vessel, every
steamboat, brings up persons of all classes, whose countenances the
desire of acquisition, or some other motive, has rendered sharp, or
imparted a fresh glow of hope to their eyes. More persons, of some
note or distinction, natives or foreigners, have visited me, and
brought me letters of introduction this season, than during years
before. Sitting on my piazza, in front of which the great stream of
ships and commerce passes, it is a spectacle at once novel, and
calculated to inspire high anticipations of the future glory of the
Mississippi Valley.
Oct. 5th. Washington Irving responds, in the kindest terms,
to my letter transmitting some manuscript materials relative to the
Indian history.
12th. Mr. Green, of Boston, wrote me on the 8th instant
unfavorably to the stability of the Christian character of my friend
Otwin, whom I had recommended to the Board for employment in the
missionary field in Lake Superior, in connection with the missionary
family at La Pointe. Mr. S. Hall, the head of that Mission, writes
(Oct. 12th): "I am glad that the providence of God directed (him)
this way, and trust his coming into this region will be for the
interest of Zion's Kingdom here. He appears to be a man of faith and
prayer. I trust he will be the means of stirring up to more
diligence in the service of our Master." What greater aid could be
given to a lone far off Indian mission, than "a man of faith and
prayer." When an observer in the vast panorama of the West and North
has seen a poor missionary and his family, living five-hundred miles
from the nearest verge of civilization, solitary and desolate,
surrounded with heathen red men, and worse than heathen white men,
with none out of his little circle to honor God or appreciate his
word, it is presumable to him that any reinforcement of help must be
hailed as cold water to a parched tongue. Not that there is any
supposed difference of opinion on the main question, between the
Head and the forest hands, so to say, of the Board, but it is
difficult, at Boston, to appreciate the disheartening circumstances
surrounding the missionary in the field. And any youthful
instability, or eccentricity of means in the way of advancing the
Gospel, should be forgiven, for the cause, after years of
experience, and not written against "a man of faith and prayer," as
it appears to have been by the pastor of Middleburgh, as with a pen
of iron.
14th. Pendonwa, son of Wahazo, a brother of the Ottawa chief,
Wing, reports himself as electing to become "an American," and says
he had so declared himself to Col. Boyd, the former Indian agent.
27th. Dr. C.R. Gilman, of New York, having, with Major M.
Hoffman, of Wall Street, paid me a visit and made a picturesque
"trip to the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior," writes me after his
safe return to the city, piquing himself on that adventure, after
having exchanged congratulations with his less enterprising
cityloving friends. It was certainly an event to be booked, that two
civilians so soldered down to the habits of city life in different
lines as the Doctor and the Major, should have extended their summer
excursion as far as Michilimackinack. But it was a farther evidence
of enterprise, and the love of the picturesque, that they should
have taken an Indian canoe, and a crew of engagees, at that point,
and ventured to visit the Pictured Rocks in Lake Superior. "Life on
the Lakes" (the title of Dr. G.'s book) was certainly a widely
different affair to "Life in New York."
31st. Circumstances had now inclined the Chippewa and Ottawa
tribes of Indians to cede to the United States a portion of their
extensive territory. Game had failed in the greater part of it, and
they had no other method of raising funds to pay their large
outstanding credits to the class of traders, and to provide for an
interval of transition, which must indeed happen, in view of their
future improvement, between the hunter and agricultural state.
The Drummond Island band had, for a year or two, advocated a sale.
The Ottawas of the peninsula determined to send a delegation to
Washington on the subject. I could not hesitate as to the course
which duty proscribed to me, under these important circumstances,
and determined to proceed to Washington, although the Secretary and
acting Governor of the Territory, Mr. Horner, on being consulted by
letter, refused his assent to this step. His want of proper
information on the subject, being but recently come to the
territory, did not appear to be such as to justify me in remaining
on the island, while the question had been carried by the Indians
themselves to, and was, probably, to be decided at Washington before
another season. I determined, therefore, to proceed to Washington,
taking one of the latest vessels for the season, on their return
from the ports on Lake Michigan.
Nov. 2d. Mr. Featherstonehaugh writes to me from Galena, on
his return from his geological reconnoisance in the north-west,
sketching some of the leading events of his progress:--
"Desirous of giving you a passing notice of my progress, I make
time, a few moments' leisure, to say that, when I had entered the
Terre Bleu River, which you remember is that tributary of the St.
Peter's I was anxious to visit, I found I could not penetrate to the
Coteau de Prairie from that quarter, and no resource was left to me
but to return, or go about three hundred miles higher up, where I
was aware I should meet a pretty insolent set of fellows amongst the
Yanktons and Tetons. The Sioux, who had committed pretty bad Indian
murders amongst the Chippewas, were in great numbers about Lac qui
Parle, and there was no avoiding them. However, it was in the line
of the duty I had undertaken, and I was willing to run some risks to
see them. They were a precious set when I got to them, but by
prudence and presents I got along with them, and, having began to
sputter a little Sioux, I took courage, left my canoe and men there,
and took a guide and interpreter and pushed on to Lac Traverse, and
from thence to Coteau de Prairie, the head waters of the St.
Peter's, and to within four days' march of the Mandan Village, Here
I wheeled about back, afraid of winter. Indeed, on my arrival at Lac
Traverse, the weather was bitterly cold, and wood and water were
sometimes found with great difficulty, in the intermediate prairies.
The day I left Fort Snelling, the thermometer was very low, the snow
six or eight inches deep on the ground; in fact it was quite winter,
and all were of opinion, at the fort, that ice would form and drive
in a few days.
"I found Mr. Keating's account of the Mississippi, and especially of
the St. Peter's, most surprisingly erroneous, and old Jonathan
Carver's book, which he is constantly denouncing, very accurate.
"I ascertained, to my perfect satisfaction, the termination of the
horizontal beds of sandstone of carboniferous limestone formation,
and came upon the outcrop of the adjacent granite, just where I
expected to find the primary rocks."
"You will greatly oblige me by communicating to me your opinion,
approximatively, of the course held by the primary rocks south of
Lake Superior, as far as you are acquainted with it, or with the
edges of the secondary rocks, which have a junction line with, or
near them. I found no primary rocks on my way from Green Bay to
Prairie du Chien. The rocks in place at Fort Winnebago, are
secondary sandstone of the carboniferous series."
2d. The question of "inscriptions" on rocks by the aborigines
has recently attracted some attention. Dr. Thomas H. Webb, of
Providence, Rhode Island, in a letter of this date, notifying me of
my election as an honorary member of the Rhode Island Historical
Society, calls my attention to this subject. "In your last work," he
remarks, "you allude to some hieroglyphics on a tree. Have you
particularly examined any on rocks; and if so, were they mere
paintings, or were they inscribed thereon? If the latter, in what
manner do they appear to have been done--pecked in with a pointed
instrument, or chizzled out? Are they simply representations of men
and animals, without method in their arrangement, or combinations of
these, with other characters bearing evidence of greater design?
Will you be kind enough to furnish me with the locations of those
with which you are acquainted? Is it possible for me to procure
drawings of them? Do you know any one living near such rocks, whom I
could hire to take copies of them, and upon the accuracy of whose
work reliance can be placed?
"I do not wish finished views--correct drawings of the characters
with a pen will be amply sufficient for my purposes; although I
should not object to outlines of the rocks themselves. I would also
ask if some of the 'relics of things that have passed away,' which
are found so abundantly in the west, e.g., articles of
pottery, iron and copper implements, &c., can be procured by
purchase, or in the way of exchange for minerals, or in some other
way?"
Imprimis--no "iron" implements have ever been found. Secondly, no
observations not made by an antiquarian can be relied on.
9th. I embarked for Detroit, on board a schooner under
command of an experienced navigator (Capt. Ward), just on the eve,
unknown to us, of a great tempest, which rendered that season
memorable in the history of wrecks on the great lakes. We had
scarcely well cleared the light-house, when the wind increased to a
gale. We soon went on furiously. Sails were reefed, and every
preparation made to keep on our way, but the wind did not admit of
it. The captain made every effort to hug the shore, and finally came
to anchor in great peril, under the highlands of Sauble. Here we
pitched terribly, and were momently in peril of being cast on shore.
In the effort to work the ship, one of the men fell from the
bowsprit, and passed under the vessel, and was lost. It was thought
that our poor little craft must go to the bottom; it seemed like a
chip on the ocean contending against the powers of the Almighty. It
seemed as if, agreeably to Indian fable, Ishkwondameka himself was
raising a tempest mountain high for some sinister purposes of his
own. But, owing to the skill of the old lake mariner, we eventually
triumphed. He never faltered in the darkest exigency. For a day and
night he struggled against the elements, and finally entered the
straits at Fort Gratiot, and he brought us safely into the port of
our destination.
On reaching Detroit, the lateness of the season admonished me to
lose no time in making my way over the stormy Erie to Buffalo,
whence I pursued my journey to New York. I reached the latter city
the day prior to the great fire, in December. I took lodgings at the
Atlantic Hotel, which is near the foot of Broadway, and immediately
west of the great scene of conflagration. The cold was so bitter
while the fire raged that I could not long endure the open air,
which seemed to be surcharged with oxygen. I reached Philadelphia
the 19th, and Washington a day or two after.
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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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