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Requirements of a missionary laborer--Otwin--American
quadrupeds--Geological question--Taste of an Indian chief for
horticulture--Swiss missionaries to the Indians--Secretary of War
visits the island--Frivolous literary, diurnal, and periodical
press--Letter of Dr. Ives on this topic--Lost boxes of minerals and
fresh-water shells--Geological visit of Mr. Featherstonehaugh and
Lieut. Mather--Mr. Hastings--A theological graduate.
April 21st. Missionary labor requires an energy and will
that surmount aft obstacles and brave all climates and all risks. A
feeble constitution, a liability to take colds on every slight
change of temperature, a sick wife who fears to put her feet on the
ground, are the very last things to bring on to the frontiers. The
risks must be run; the determined mind makes a way for everything.
To ponder and doubt on a thousand points which may occur on such a
subject, is something in effect like asking a bond of the Lord, in
addition to his promises, that he will preserve the man and his
family in all scenes of sickness and dangers, in the forest and out
of the forest, scathless. Such a man has no call clearly for the
work; but he may yet labor efficiently at home. There is a species
of moral heroism required for the true missionary, such as Brainerd
and Henry Martin felt.
These feelings result from a letter of this date, written by a
reverend gentleman of Phillipsburg, N.Y., whose mind has been
directed to the Mackinack field. He puts too many questions
respecting the phenomena of temperature, the liability to colds, and
the general diseases of the country, for one who has fearlessly "put
on the whole armor of God," to invade the heathen wilderness. The
truth is, in relation to this position, the climate is generally
dry, and has no causes of disease in it. The air is a perfect
restorative to invalids, and never fails to provoke appetite and
health. It is already a partial resort for persons out of health,
and cannot fail to be appreciated as a watering place in the summer
months as the country increases in population. To Chicago, St.
Louis, Natchez, and New Orleans, as well as Detroit, Cleveland,
Cincinnati, and Buffalo, I should suppose it to be a perfect
Montpelier in the summer season.
May 6th. In the scenes of domestic and social and moral
significancy, which have rendered the island a place of delight to
many persons during the seclusion of the winter, no one has entered
with a more pleasing zeal into the area than a young man whose
birth, I think, was not far from the Rock of Plymouth. I shall call
him Otwin. I invited him to pass the winter as a guest in my house,
where his conversation, manners, and deep enthusiastic and poetic
feeling, and just discrimination of the moral obligation in men,
rendered him an agreeable inmate. He had a saying and a text for
almost everybody, but uttered all he said in such a pleasing spirit
as to give offence to none. He was ever in the midst of those who
came together to sing and pray, and was quite a favorite with the
soldiers of the garrison. He wrote during the season some poetic
sketches of Bible scenes, which he sent by a friend to New York in
the hope that they might merit publication. Dr. Ives, of N.Y., to
whom I wrote in relation to them, put the manuscript into the hands
of the Sabbath School Publishing Committee, which appeared to be a
judicious disposition. It was, probably, thought to require
something more than moral didactic dialogues to justify the
experiment of printing them. Otwin himself went into the missionary
field of Lake Superior.
10th. The Indians have brought me at various times the skins
of a white deer, of an Arctic fox, of a wolverine, and some other
species which have either past out of their usual latitudes or
assumed some new trait. Elks' and deers' horns, the foot, horns, and
skin of the cariboo, which is the C. Sylvestris, are
deposited in my cabinet, and are mementos of their gifts from the
forest. One of the questions hardest for the Christian geologist to
solve is--how the animals of our forests got to America. For there
is every evidence, both from the Sacred Record and from the
examination of the strata, that the ancient disruption was
universal, and destroyed the species and genera which could not
exist in water. One of two conditions of the globe seems necessary,
on the basis of the Pentateuch, to account for their
migration--either that a continental connection existed, or that the
seas in northern latitudes were frozen over. But, in the latter
case, how did the tropical animals subsist and exist?
The Polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the musk ox would do well
enough; but how was the armadillo, the cougar, the lama, and even
the bison to fare?
This question is far more difficult to solve than that of the
migration of the aborigines, for they could cross in various ways;
but quadrupeds could not come in boats. Birds could fly from island
to island, snakes and dogs might swim, but how came the sloth and
the other quadrupeds of the torrid zone? Who can assert that there
has not been a powerful disruptive geological action in the now
peaceable Pacific? It is replete with volcanic powers.
15th. Chabowawa, an Indian chief, a Chippewa, called to get
some slips of the currant-bush from my garden, to take to his
village. Although the buds were too near the point of expansion, in
the open and sunny parts of the garden, some slips were found near
the fences more backward, and he was thus supplied.
25th. I have long deliberated what I should do with my materials,
denoting a kind of oral literature among the Chippewas and other
tribes, in the shape of legends and wild tales of the imagination.
The narrations themselves are often so incongruous, grotesque, and
fragmentary, as to require some hand better than mine, to put them
in shape. And yet, I feel that nearly all their value, as indices of
Indian imagination, must depend on preserving their original form.
Some little time since, I wrote to Washington Irving on the subject.
In a response of this date, he observes:--
"The little I have seen of our Indian tribes has awakened an earnest
anxiety to know more concerning them, and, if possible, to embody
some of their fast-fading characteristics and traditions in our
popular literature. My own personal opportunities of observing them
must, necessarily, be few and casual; but I would gladly avail
myself of any information derived from others who have been enabled
to mingle among them, and capacitated to perceive and appreciate
their habits, customs, and moral qualities. I know of no one to whom
I would look with more confidence, in these respects, than to
yourself; and, I assure you, I should receive as high and unexpected
favors any communication of the kind you suggest, that would aid me
in furnishing biographies, tales or sketches, illustrative of Indian
life, Indian character, and Indian mythology and superstitions."
I had never regarded these manuscripts, gleaned from the lodges with
no little pains-taking, as mere materials to be worked up by the
literary loom, although the work should be done by one of the most
popular and fascinating American pens. I feared that the roughness,
which gave them their characteristic originality and Doric
truthfulness, would be smoothed and polished off to assume the shape
of a sort of Indo-American series of tales; a cross between the
Anglo-Saxon and the Algonquin.
28th. Switzerland enters the missionary field of America for the
purpose of improving the condition of the aborigines. This impressed
me as well. We leave the red man sitting in every want, at our
doors, and rush to India. It is true, that field counts its
millions, where we can thousands. But an appeal to the missionary
record shows, if I am not greatly mistaken, that the proportionate
number of converts from an Indian tribe is greater than that of the
tribes of Asia, and that an infinitely greater sum is expended by
our churches for every convert to Christianity made among the
heathen of Asia than of America. The Rev. Henry Olivier, from the
Evangelical Society in Switzerland, visited me, this day, with a
companion in his labors. He detailed to me his plans. It is his
design to select the Dacotah tribe, on the Upper Mississippi, as the
object of his exertions.
June 2d. Commenced setting new pickets in front of the agency lot,
and removing the old ones of white cedar, which, tradition says,
have stood near half a century.
15th. The editors of the Knickerbocker Magazine (Clark and Edson)
solicit contributions to its pages. This periodical has always
maintained a respectable rank, and appears destined to hold on its
course. I am too far out of the world to judge well. The conflict of
periodicals appears to increase; but I do not think that the number
of sound readers, who seek useful knowledge, keeps pace with it. I
think not. We seem to be on the eve of a light and trifling kind of
literature, which is hashed up with condiments for weak stomachs.
July 2d. The weather, for the entire month of June, was most
delightful and charming. On one of the latter days of the month the
fine and large steamer "Michigan" came into the harbor, with a
brilliant throng of visitors, among the number the Secretary of War
(Gen. Cass) and his daughter. The arrival put joy and animation into
every countenance. The Secretary reviewed the troops, and visited
the Agency, and the workshops for the benefit of the Indians. He,
and the gay and brilliant throng, visited whatever was curious and
interesting, and embarked on their return to Detroit, after
receiving the warm congratulations of the citizens. I took the
occasion to accompany the party to Detroit.
4th. The debasing character of the light and popular literature
which is coming into vogue, is happily alluded to in a casual letter
from Dr. A.W. Ives, of New York. "I regret," he says, "that the well
directed labors of the excellent Otwin cannot be made available, but
the truth is, there is such an unspeakable mass of matter written
for the press at the present day, that all of it cannot be printed,
much less be read. I think it one of the great toils of the age.
Indolence is a natural attribute of man, and he dislikes
intellectual even more than physical toil. Most men read, therefore,
only such things as require no thought, and consequently there is a
bounty offered for the most frivolous literary productions....
"Your isolated position prevents your realizing, to its greatest
extent, the evil of this superfluity of books; but if you were
constantly receiving from thirty to forty daily, weekly, and monthly
periodicals, besides one or more ponderous volumes, every week, I
cannot but think that, with all your ambition and thirst for
knowledge, you would wish rather for an Alexandrian conflagration
than an increase of books.
"Every man who thinks he has a new thought, or striking thought,
thinks himself justified in writing a volume. Of this I would not
complain if he would have the ingenuousness to inform the reader, in
a nota bene, on what page the new idea could be found, so that, if
he paid for the book, he should be spared the trouble of hunting for
the kernel in the bushel of compiled and often incongruous chaff, in
which the author has dexterously hid it.
"But the labor and expense of new publications are the least of
their evils. You cannot imagine what an influence is exerted, in
this city, at the present time, by 'penny newspapers.' There are
from fifteen to twenty, I believe, published daily, and not less on
an average, I presume, than 5000 copies of each. A number of them
strike off from 10,000 to 20,000 every day. They have no regular
subscribers, or at least, they do not depend upon subscribers for a
support. They are hawked about the streets, the steamboats and
taverns by boys, and are, for the most part, extravagant stories,
caricature descriptions, police reports, infidel vulgarity and
profanity, and, in short, of just such matter as unprincipled,
selfish, and bad men know to be best fitted to pamper the appetites
and passions of the populace, and so uproot and destroy all that is
valuable and sacred in our literary, civil, and religious
institutions.
"A spirit of ultraism seems to pervade the whole community. The
language of Milton's archdevil 'Evil, be thou my good,' is the creed
of modern reformers, or, in other words--anything for a change.
What is to come of all this, I have not wisdom even to guess. It is
an age of transition, and whether you and I live to see the
elements of the moral and political world at rest, is, I think,
extremely doubtful. But our consolation should be that the Lord
reigns--that he loves good order and truth better than we do--and,
blessed be his name, he is able to establish and maintain them.
"This is the anniversary of our national independence, and ought to
be celebrated with thanksgiving and praise to God. Alas! how it is
perverted."
22d. Mr. Green, of the Missionary Rooms, Boston, again writes
about the Mackinack Mission. "I believe that my views accord very
nearly with your own, as to what it would be desirable to do,
provided the suitable persons could be procured to perform the work.
There is a great deficiency in well qualified laborers. We can
generally obtain persons who will answer our purpose, if we will
wait long enough, but it often happens, in the mean time, that the
circumstances so change that the proposed plan becomes of doubtful
expediency. We have been continually on the lookout, since Mr. Ferry
left Mackinack, for some one to fill his place, but as yet have
found no one, and have no one in view."
28th. Mr. W. Fred. Williams, of Buffalo, communicates information
respecting three boxes of specimens of natural history, which I lost
in the fall of 1821. "My conversation with you having made me
acquainted with the fact that you once lost two boxes of minerals
and one of shells, I have been rather on the lookout for information
respecting them, and am now able to inform you as to what became of
them, and to correct the statement which I made (as I said) on
supposition of the manner in which Edgerton became possessed of
them.
"In the spring of 1832, a stranger from Troy or Albany came to Mr.
Edgerton, at Utica, and told him that he had two boxes of minerals
which he had received from Mr. Schoolcraft, and that if he (E.)
would label them, he (E.) might take what he wished to retain for
his trouble. He said, also, that he was about to establish a school
at Lockport, but, knowing nothing of mineralogy, he wished to get
the specimens labeled. Mr. Edgerton unpacked the boxes, took a few
for himself, labeled and repacked the rest, and returned them to the
stranger.
"The box of shells was left at the tavern of Levi Cozzens, in
Utica, where they remained two years, waiting for some one to claim
them; about this time Mr. C., closing up his concern, opened the box
and gave the shells to his children for playthings, and sent the mocock
of sugar (which had your name on or about it) to his mother. If the
person who had the minerals still remains at Lockport, perhaps they
may be recovered, but the shells are all destroyed."
The minerals referred to consisted of choice and large specimens of
the colored and crystaline fluates of lime from Illinois, and the
attractive species and varieties of sulphates of barytes, sulphurets
of lead, radiated quartz, &c. &c., from Missouri, which I had
revisited in 1821. They were fine cabinet specimens, but contained
no new species or varieties. Not so with the fresh-water shells.
They embraced all the species of the Wabash River, whose entire
length I had traversed that year, from its primary forks to its
entrance into the Ohio. Among them were some new things, which
would, at that time, have proved a treat to my conchological
friends.
8th. Mukonsewyan, or the Little Bear Skin, visited the office,
with a retinue. He asked whether any Indians from the Fond du Lac,
or Upper Mississippi, had visited the office this season. I stated
to him the renewal of hostilities between the Sioux and Chippewas,
as a probable reason why they had not. He entered freely into
conversation on the history of the Sioux, and spoke of their perfidy
to the Chippewas. I asked him if they were as treacherous to the
Americans as they had been to the British--several of whose traders
they had in former days killed. He said he had seen the Sioux
offenders of that day, encamped at Mackinack, while the British held
it, under the guns of the fort, and all the Indians expected that
they would have been seized. But they were suffered to retire
unmolested.
14th. I went to Round Island with Mr. Featherstonehaugh and Lieut. Mather. Examined the ancient ossuaries and the scenery on that
island. Mr. F. is on his way to the Upper Mississippi as a geologist
in the service of the Topographical Bureau. He took a good deal of
interest in examining my cabinet, and proposed I should exchange the
Lake Superior minerals for the gold ores of Virginia, &c. He showed
me his idea of the geological column, and drew it out. I accompanied
him around the island, to view its reticulated and agaric filled
limestone cliffs; but derived no certain information from him of the
position in the geological scale of this very striking stratum. It
is, manifestly, the magnesian limestone of Conybeare and Phillips,
or muschelkalk of the Germans.
Lieut. Mather brought me a letter from Major Whiting, from which I
learn that he has been professor of mineralogy in the Military
Academy at West Point. I found him to be animated with a zeal for
scientific discovery, united with accurate and discriminating powers
of observation.
Among my visitors about this time, none impressed me more pleasingly
than a young gentleman from Cincinnati--a graduate of Lane
Seminary--a Mr. Hastings, who brought me a letter from a friend at
Detroit. He appeared to be imbued with the true spirit of piety, to
be learned in his vocation without ostentation, and discriminating
without ultraism. And he left me, after a brief stay, with an
impression that he was destined to enter the field of moral
instruction usefully to his fellow-men, believing that it is far
better to undertake to persuade than to drive men by assault, as
with cannon, from their strongholds of opinion.
This site includes some historical
materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language
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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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