These popular estimates, may serve the purpose of general comparison, but require some considerable abatements. There is a tendency to estimate the numbers of Indian tribes like those of flocks of birds and schools of fish. We soon get into thousands, and where the theme is guessing, thousands are soon added to thousands.

Dec. 4th. James L. Schoolcraft of Michilimackinack, in a letter of Nov. 10th, describes a most revolting scene of murder, which, owing to the effects of drinking, recently occurred at the Menomonie pay-ground at Grande Chute, Wisconsin.

"Since closing my letter of this morning, Lieut. Root, just from Fort Winnebago, informs me that he attended the payment of the Menomonies, at the Grande Chute; that liquor, as usual, had found its way to the place of payment, and that, in consequence, an Indian had killed two Indian women. That the individual (murderer) was taken to the tent of the agent, Colonel Boyd, but that, in consequence of the repeated and threatening demands of the Indians for the man, the agent was obliged to deliver him up to them, and that they then, in front of the tent, inflicted wounds of death, from six different blades, upon the body of the murderer, beat his brain out with clubs, and then threw his body upon a burning fire, after which he was dragged some distance, to which place he might be traced by attached embers strewed along the path.

"A child was crushed to death by a drunken Indian accidentally. Lieut. Root informs me that he left the ground, soon after the scene above alluded to, and that many of the Indians were armed with knives, and in much excitement."

6th. I visited Mr. Gallatin at his house in Bleecker Street, and spent the entire morning in listening to his instructive conversation, in the course of which he spoke of early education, geometric arithmetic, the principles of languages and history, American and European. He said, speaking of the

EARLY EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.—Few children are taught to read well early, and, in consequence, they never can become good readers. A page should, as it were, dissolve before the eye, and be absorbed by the mind. Reading and spelling correctly cannot be too early taught, and should be thoroughly taught.

Arithmetic.—G. There is no good arithmetic in which the reasons are given, so as to be intelligible to children. Condorcet wrote the best tract on the subject, while in confinement at a widow's house near Paris, before his execution. The language of arithmetic is universal, the eight digits serving all combinations. They were not introduced till 1200. The Russians count by sticks and beads. The Romans must have had some such method. M stood for 1000, D for 500, C for 100, L for 50, X for ten, V for five, and I for one. But how could they multiply complex sums by placing one under another.

LANGUAGES.—S. How desirable it would be if so simple a system could be applied to language.

G. Ah! it was not designed by the Creator. He evidently designed diversity. I have recently received some of the native vocabularies from Mackenzie—the Blackfeet and Fall Indians, &c. Parker had furnished in his travels vocabularies of the Nez Perces, Chinooks, &c.

LEADING FAMILIES.—S. The term Algonquin, as commonly understood, is not sufficiently comprehensive for the people indicated.

G. I intended to extend it by adding the term "Lenape." The Choctaw and the Muscogee is radically the same. The Chickasaw and Choctaw has been previously deemed one. Du Pratz wrote about the Mobilian language without even suspecting that it was the Choctaw.

G. The National Institute at Paris has printed Mr. Duponceau's Prize Essay on the Algonquin. Dr. James wrote unsuccessfully for the prize. Duponceau first mentioned you to me. He has freely translated from your lectures on the substantive, which gives you a European reputation.

PUBLISHERS ON PHILOLOGY.—G. There is no patronage for such works here. Germany and France are the only countries where treatises on philology can be published. It is Berlin or Paris, and of these Berlin holds the first place. In Great Britain, as in this country, there is not sufficient interest on the subject for booksellers to take hold of mere works of fact of this sort. They are given to reading tales and light literature, as here.

ORAL TALES OF THE INDIANS—G. Your "Indian Tales" and your "Hieroglyphics" would sell here; but grammatical materials on the languages will not do, unless they can be arranged as appendices.

S. I urged Governor Cass to write on this subject, and he declined.

G. Does he understand the languages?

S. Pronouns, in our Indian languages, are of a more permanent character than philologists have admitted. They endure in some form, in kindred dialects, the most diverse.

G. This is true, the sign is always left, and enables one, clearly enough, to trace stocks. Dialects are easily made. There are many in France, and they fill other parts of Europe. Every department in France has one.

DISCRIMINATING VIEWS OF PHILOLOGY AND PHILOLOGISTS.—G. It is not clear what Heckewelder meant by "whistling sound," in the prefix pronouns. I told Mr. Duponceau that it had been better that the gentleman's MSS. were left as he originally wrote them, with mere corrections as to grammar—that we should then, in fact, have had Indian information. For Heckewelder thought and felt like a Delaware, and believed all their stories.[89]

[Footnote 89: This admission of the re-composition of Mr. Heckewelder's letters, and the excellent missionary's general deficiency, furnishes a striking confirmation of the views and sagacity of a critic of the North American Review, writing on that topic, in 1825. And the more so, as those views were conjectural, but they were the conjectures of one who had personally known Mr. Heckewelder.]

MONOSYLLABIC LANGUAGE.—G. You have asserted that all the Indian roots are monosyllables.

S. Most of them, not all. This is a branch to which I have paid particular attention; and if there is anything in Indian philology in which I deem myself at home, it is in the analysis of Indian words, the digging out of roots, and showing their derivatives and compounds.

G. The societies would print your observations on these topics. They are of much interest.

ORIGIN OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGE.—S. The Hebrew is based on roots like the Indian, which appear to have strong analogies to the Semitic family. It is not clearly Hindostanee, or Chinese, or Norse. I have perused Rafn's Grammar by Marsh. The Icelandic (language) clearly lies at the foundation of the Teutonic.

G. I have not seen this. The grammatical principles of the Hebrew [90] are widely different (from the Indian). There is, in this respect, no resemblance. I think the Indian language has principles akin to the Greek. The middle moods, or voices, in the Greek and Indian dialects are alike; they make the imperfect past, or aorist, in a similar manner.

[Footnote 90: Mr. G. did not understand the Hebrew, and was not aware that the person he addressed had made a study of it in particular reference to the Indian.]

PATOIS.—G. The great impediment to popular instruction in France, is the multiplicity of patois, and the tenacity of the peasantry for them. The same objection exists to the use of so many Indian dialects by such numbers of petty tribes. Pity these were not all abolished. They can never prosper without coming on to general grounds in this respect.

CHINESE.—Mr. Duponceau had published Col. Galindo's account of the Ottomic of Mexico, and likened it to the Chinese. It was the very reverse.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.—S. The English language of Chaucer's day, is based on the Frisic, Belgic, and Low Dutch; and not on the Saxon. (Examples were given. He fully assented to this, and used his familiarity with European history to demonstrate it.)

G. There was, in fact, no Anglo-Saxon but that of Alfred, which was the old English. The early migrations were from Belgium. Doubtless the Teutons had made the conquest ascribed to them, but I think they did not revolutionize the language. They conquered the people, but not the language.

WASHINGTON IRVING.—G. Washington Irving is the most popular writer. Anything from his pen would sell.

JOHN JACOB ASTOR.—Several years ago, J. J. A. put into my hands the journal of his traders on the Columbia, desiring me to use it. I put it into the hands of Malte Brun, at Paris, who employed the geographical facts in his work, but paid but little respect to Mr. Astor, whom he regarded merely as a merchant seeking his own profit, and not a discoverer. He had not even sent a man to observe the facts in the natural history. Astor did not like it. He was restive several years, and then gave Washington Irving $5,000 to take up the MSS. This is the History of "Astoria."

RAFINESQUE.—This erratic naturalist being referred to, he said—

"Who is Rafinesque, and what is his character?"

NAPOLEON AND NERO.—Bonaparte was a mathematician; but, whatever he did, he did not appreciate other branches of science and research. On taking Rome, he carried to Paris all the Pope's archives, containing, in fact, the materials for the secret history of Europe. The papers occupied seventy large boxes, which were carefully corded and sealed, and put away in a garret of the Louvre at Paris, and never opened. On the restoration of the Bourbons, Louis XVIII. gave them back to the Pope's nuncio. The seals had never been broken.

Bonaparte hated Tacitus. He was an aristocrat, he said, and lied in his history. He had blackened the character of Nero merely because he was a republican. "That may be, sire," said ——, "but it is not the generally received opinion, and authorities sustain him." "Read Suetonius," said he. "Truly," said M. Gallatin, "it is there stated that the people strewed flowers on Nero's grave for years."

ALGIC RESEARCHES.—The oral legends of the Indians collected by me being adhered to, he said, "Take care that, in publishing your Indian legends, you do not subject yourself to the imputations made against Macpherson."

On leaving the hall, whither he came to see me out, he said: "I am seventy-eight, and (assuming a gayer vein) in a good state of preservation." He was then a little bent, but preserved in conversation the vivacity of his prime. He had, I think, been a man of about five feet ten or eleven inches. His accent and tone of voice are decidedly French. His eye, which is black and penetrating, kindled up readily. He wore a black silk cap to hide baldness.

15th. A singular coincidence of the names and ages of Indian chiefs, is shown in the following notice from a Russian source:—

"We have just received from Nova Archangesk, an account of the death of the chief of one of the most powerful tribes of North America, Black Hawk, who was suddenly carried off on the banks of the River Moivna, in the seventy-first year of his age. The loss of this chief, who kept up friendly relations with the authorities of the Russian colony, and was always hostile to the English, is felt in a lively manner by the Russian government, who rested great hopes on the influence exercised by Black Hawk, not only over his own tribe, but also over all the neighboring nations. The Czar has ordered the new governor-general of the Russian colony in America to endeavor by all means to secure the friendship of the three sons of Black Hawk, the eldest of whom, now forty-eight years of age, has succeeded his father in the government of the tribe."—Le Commerce.

22d. I left New York on the 12th, in the cars, with Mrs. Schoolcraft and the children, for Washington, stopping at the Princeton depot, and taking a carriage for Princeton. I determined to leave my son at the Round Hill School, in charge of Mr. Hart, and the next day went to Philadelphia, where I accepted the invitation of Gen. Robert Patterson to spend a few days at his tasteful mansion in Locust street. I visited the Academy of Natural Sciences, and examined Dr. Samuel George Morton's extensive collection of Indian crania. While here, I placed my daughter in the private school of the Misses Guild, South Fourth Street. I attended one of the "Wistar parties" of the season, on the 15th, at Mr. Lea's, the distinguished bookseller and conchologist, and reached the city of Washington on the 21st, taking lodgings at my excellent friends, the Miss Polks.

24th. Submitted an application to the department for expending a small part of the Indian education fund, for furthering the general object, by publishing, for the use of teachers and scholars, a compendious dictionary, and general grammar of the Indian languages.

25th. In a conference with Mr. Murray, of Pennsylvania, a recent commissioner to adjust Indian claims at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, he gave me Mr. Robert Stuart's testimony respecting the Indian trade, to read. It appears from the document that the gain on trade of the American Fur Company, from 1824 to 1827, was $167,000. From 1827 to 1834 it was $195,000. From the aggregate of ten years' business, there is to be deducted $45,000, being a loss from 1817 to 1824, which leaves a profit on seventeen years' trade of $317,000.

Mr. Murray presented me a copy of the Commissioner's report. These claims have not yet received the action of the department. The commissioners set out with requiring of traders high evidence of the individual indebtedness by Indians. They finally decided that the Winnebago debts were national. They went further—they approved and adopted the decision of a meeting of the claimants themselves, as to the application to individual firms, of the fund. This decision was subsequently sanctioned by eight Winnebago chiefs, who were stated to be authorized to act for the nation.

The error, in all these cases, seems to be, that where a tribe has agreed to set apart a generic sum to satisfy debts, and the United States has accepted the trusteeship of determining the individual shares, that the Indians, who cannot read, or write, or understand figures, or accounts at all, and cannot possibly tell the arithmetical difference between one figure and another, should yet be made the subject of these minor appeals. The TRUSTEE himself should determine that, by such testimony as he approves, and not appear to seek to bolster up the decisions of truth and faithfulness, by calling on Indian ignorance and imbecility, which is subject to be operated on by every species of selfishness.

25th. I applied to the department this day, by letter, for leave of absence from my post on the frontier, to visit Europe.

26th. I called on Mr. Poinsett, the Secretary of War, and received from him the permission which I had yesterday solicited. I also called on the President (Mr. Van Buren), who, in turning the conversation to the state of disturbances on the frontier, evinced the deepest interest that neutrality should be preserved, and asked me whether the United States Marshal at Detroit had faithfully performed his duty.

27th. Visited Mr. Paulding (Secretary of the Navy) in the evening. Found him a father aged bald-headed man, of striking physiognomy, prominent intellectual developments, and easy dignified manners. It was pleasing to recognize one of the prominent authors of Salmagundi, which I had read in my schoolboy days, and never even hoped to see the author of this bit of fun in our incipient literature. For it is upon this, and the still higher effort of Irving's facetious History of New York, that we must base our imaginative literature. They first taught us that we had a right to laugh. We were going on, on so very stiff a model, that, without the Knickerbocker, we should not have found it out.

28th. I prepared a list of queries for the department, designed to elicit a more precise and reliable account of the Indian tribes than has yet appeared. It is astonishing how much gross error exists in the popular mind respecting their true character.

Talk of an Indian—why the very stare Says, plain as language, Sir, have you been there? Do tell me, has a Potawattomie a soul, And have the tribes a language? Now that's droll— They tell me some have tails like wolves, and others claws, Those Winnebagoes, and Piankashaws.

30th. Mr. Paulding transmits a note of thanks for some Indian words. The euphony of the aboriginal vocabulary impresses most persons. In most of their languages this appears to result, in part, from the fact that a vowel and a consonant go in pairs—i.e. a vowel either precedes or follows a consonant, and it is comparatively rare that two consonants are required to be uttered together. There is but one language that has the th, so common in English. Sh and gh are, however, frequently sounded in the Chippewa. The most musical words are found in the great Muscogee and Algonquin families, and it is in these that the regular succession of vowels and consonants is found.

31st. The year 1838 has been a marked one in our Indian relations. The southern Indians have experienced an extensive breaking up, in their social institutions, and been thrown, by the process of emigration, west of the Mississippi, and the policy of the government on this head, which was first shadowed out in 1825, and finally sanctioned by the act of land exchanges, 1830, may be deemed as having been practically settled. The Cherokees, who required the movements of an army to induce them to carry out the principles of the treaty of New Echota, have made their first geographical movement since the discovery of the continent, a period of 331 years. How much longer they had dwelt in the country abandoned we know not. They clung to it with almost a death grasp. It is a lovely region, and replete with a thousand advantages and a thousand reminiscences. Nothing but the drum of the Anglo-Saxon race could have given them an effectual warning to go. Gen. Scott, in his well advised admonitory proclamation, well said, that the voice under which both he and they acted is imperative, and that by heeding it, it is hoped that "they will spare him the horror of witnessing the destruction of the Cherokees." The great Muskogee family had been broken up, by the act of Georgia, before. The Seminoles, who belong to that family, broke out themselves in a foolish hostility very late in 1835, and have kept up a perfectly senseless warfare, in the shelter of hummocks and quagmires since. The Choctaws and Chickasaws, with a wise forecast, had forseen their position, and the utter impossibility of setting up independent governments in the boundaries of the States. It is now evident to all, that the salvation of these interesting relics of Oriental races lies in colonization west. Their teachers, the last to see the truth, have fully assented to it. Public sentiment has settled on that ground; sound policy dictates it; and the most enlarged philanthropy for the Indian race perceives its best hopes in the measure.



CHAPTER LXVI.

Sentiments of loyalty—Northern Antiquarian Society—Indian statistics—Rhode Island Historical Society—Gen. Macomb—Lines in the Odjibwa language by a mother on placing her children at school—Mehemet Ali—Mrs. Jameson's opinion on publishers and publishing—Her opinion of my Indian legends—False report of a new Indian language—Indian compound words—Delafield's Antiquities—American Fur Company—State of Indian disturbances in Texas and Florida—Causes of the failure of the war in Florida, by an officer—Death of an Indian chief—Mr. Bancroft's opinion on the Dighton Rock inscription—Skroellings not in New England—Mr. Gallatin's opinion on points of Esquimaux language, connected with our knowledge of our archaeology.

1839. Jan. 1st. I called, amid the throng, on the President. His manners were bland and conciliatory. These visits, on set days, are not without the sentiment of strong personality in many of the visitors, but what gives them their most significant character is the general loyalty they evince to the constitution, and government, and supreme law of the land. The President is regarded, for the time, as the embodiment of this sentiment, and the tacit fealty paid to him, as the supreme law officer, is far more elevating to the self-balanced and independent mind than if he were a monarch ad libitum, and not for four years merely.

2d. I received a notice of my election as a member of the Royal Northern Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, of which fact I had been previously notified by that Society. This Society shows us how the art of engraving may be brought in as an auxiliary to antiquarian letters; but it certainly undervalues American sagacity if it conjectures that such researches and speculations as those of Mr. Magnusen, on the Dighton Rock, and what it is fashionable now-a-days to call the NEWPORT RUIN, can satisfy the purposes of a sound investigation of the Anti-Columbian period of American history.

There was a perfect jam this evening at Blair's. What sort of a compliment is it to be one of five or six hundred people, not half of whom can be squeezed into a small house, and not one of whom can pretend to taste a morsel without the danger of having server and all jammed down his throat.

3d. The mail hunts up everybody. Go where you will, and particularly to the seat of government, and letters will follow you. Whoever is in the service of government bears a part of the functions of it, though it be but an infinitesimal part. Mr. H. Conner, the Saginaw sub-agent, in a letter of this date, reports the Saginaws at one thousand four hundred and forty-three souls, and the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewas at one hundred and ninety-eight. One of the most singular facts in the statistics of the most of the frontier Indian tribes of the Lakes, is, in the long run, that they neither increase nor decline, but just keep up a sort of dying existence.

4th. Dr. Thomas H. Webb, Secretary of the Rhode Island Historical Society, announces the plan of that Society in publishing a series of works illustrating, in the first place, the history and language of the Indians, and soliciting me to become a contributor of original observations. The difficulty in all true efforts of our literary history is the want of means. A man must devote all his leisure in researches, and then finds that there is no way in which these labors can be made to aid in supplying him the means of subsistence. He must throw away his time, and yet buy his bread. There is no real taste for letters in a people who will not pay for them. It is too early in our history, perhaps, to patronize them as a general thing. Making and inventing new ploughs will pay, but not books.

9th. The Secretary of War confirms my leave of absence, to visit Europe, and extends it beyond the contingencies of a re-appointment, on the 4th of March next.

10th. Attended a general and crowded party at Gen. Macomb's, in the evening, with Mrs. Schoolcraft. The General has always appeared to me a perfect amateur in military science, although he has distinguished himself in the field. He is a most polished and easy man in all positions in society, and there is an air and manner by which he constantly reveals his French blood. He has a keen perception of the ridiculous, and a nice appreciation of the mock gravity of the heroic in character, and related to me a very effective scene of this latter kind, which occurred at Mr. John Johnston's, at St. Mary's Falls, on the close of the late war. He had visited that place in perhaps 1815 or 1816, as military commander of the District of Michigan, in the suite of Major-Gen. Brown. They were guests of Mr. Johnston. In going up the river to see Gros Cape, at the foot of Lake Superior, the American party had been fired upon by the Chippewas, who were yet hostile in feeling. When the party returned to the house of Mr. Johnston, their host, the latter drew himself up in the spirit of the border times of Waverley, and, with the air and accent of a chief of those days—which, by the way, was not altogether unnatural to him—manifested the high gentlemanly indignation of a host whose hospitality had been violated. He exclaimed to his eldest son, "Let our followers be ready to repel this gross affront." The General's eye danced in telling it. The thing of the firing had been done—nobody was hurt—nobody was in fact in hostile array; and far less was the party itself alarmed. It had been some crack-brained Indian, I believe Sassaba, who yet smarted at the remembrance of the death of his brother, who was killed with Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames.

11th. Left Washington, with my family, in the cars for Baltimore, where we lodged; reached Philadelphia the next day, at four P.M.; remained the 13th and 14th, and reached New York on the 16th, at 4 o'clock P.M.

14th. Mrs. Schoolcraft, having left her children at school, at Philadelphia and Princeton, remained pensive, and wrote the following lines in the Indian tongue, on parting from them, which. I thought so just that I made a translation of them.

Nyau nin de nain dum May kow e yaun in Ain dah nuk ki yaun Waus sa wa kom eg Ain dah nuk ki yaun

Ne dau nig ainse e Ne gwis is ainse e Ishe nau gun ug wau Waus sa wa kom eg

She gwau go sha ween Ba sho waud e we Nin zhe ka we yea Ishe ez hau jau yaun Ain dah nuk ke yaun

Ain dah nuk ke yaun Nin zhe ke we yea Ishe ke way aun e Nyau ne gush kain dum

[FREE TRANSLATION.]

Ah! when thought reverts to my country so dear, My heart fills with pleasure, and throbs with a fear: My country, my country, my own native land, So lovely in aspect, in features so grand, Far, far in the West. What are cities to me, Oh! land of my mother, compared unto thee?

Fair land of the lakes! thou are blest to my sight, With thy beaming bright waters, and landscapes of light; The breeze and the murmur, the dash and the roar, That summer and autumn cast over the shore, They spring to my thoughts, like the lullaby tongue, That soothed me to slumber when youthful and young.

One feeling more strongly still binds me to thee, There roved my forefathers, in liberty free— There shook they the war lance, and sported the plume, Ere Europe had cast o'er this country a gloom; Nor thought they that kingdoms more happy could be, White lords of a land so resplendent and free.

Yet it is not alone that my country is fair, And my home and my friends are inviting me there; While they beckon me onward, my heart is still here, With my sweet lovely daughter, and bonny boy dear: And oh! what's the joy that a home can impart, Removed from the dear ones who cling to my heart.

It is learning that calls them; but tell me, can schools Repay for my love, or give nature new rules? They may teach them the lore of the wit and the sage, To be grave in their youth, and be gay in their age; But ah! my poor heart, what are schools to thy view, While severed from children thou lovest so true!

I return to my country, I haste on my way, For duty commands me, and duty must sway; Yet I leave the bright land where my little ones dwell, With a sober regret, and a bitter farewell; For there I must leave the dear jewels I love, The dearest of gifts from my Master above.

NEW YORK, March 18th, 1839.

17th. Went, in the evening, to hear Mr. Stephens, the celebrated traveler, lecture before the Historical Society, at the Stuyvesant Institute, on Mehemet Ali. Public opinion places lecturers sometimes in a false position. An attempt was here made to make out Mehemet Ali a great personage, exercising much influence in his times. An old despotic rajah in a tea-pot! Who looks to him for exaltation of sentiment, liberality and enlargement of views, or as an exemplar of political truth? Mr. Stephens, however, knew the feeling and expectation of his audience, and drew a picture, which was eloquently done, and well received. This popular mode of lecturing is certainly better than the run-a-muck amusements of the day. But it panders to an excited intellectual appetite, and is anything but philosophical, historical, or strictly just.

18th. I received instructions from Washington, to form a treaty with the Saginaws, for the cession of a tract of ground on which to build a light-house on Saginaw Bay.

The next letter I opened was from Mrs. Jameson, of London, who writes that her plan of publication is, to divide the profits with her publishers, and, as these are honest men and gentlemen, she has found that the best way. She advises me to adopt the same course with respect to my Indian legends.[91]

[Footnote 91: I followed this advice, but fell into the hands of the Philistines.]

"I published," she says, "in my little journal, one or two legends which Mrs. Schoolcraft gave me, and they have excited very general interest. The more exactly you can (in translation) adhere to the style of the language of the Indian nations, instead of emulating a fine or correct English style—the more characteristic in all respects—the more original—the more interesting your work will be."

21st. I read the following article in the New York Herald:—

NEW INDIAN TRIBE.—Dr. Jackson, in his report of the geology of the public lands, states that at the mouth of the Tobique there is an Indian settlement, where a large tribe of Indians reside, and gain a livelihood by trapping the otter and beaver. These Indians are quite distinct from the Penobscot tribe, and speak a peculiar language.

Query. What is the name of this tribe? what language do they speak? and what evidence is there that they are not Souriquois or Miemacks, who have been known to us since the first settlement of Acadia and Nova Scotia?

Indian compound words are very composite. Aco, in the names of places once occupied by Algonquin bands, means, a limit, or as far as, and is intended to designate the boundary or reach of woods and waters. Ac-ow means length of area. Accomac appears to mean, at the place of the trees, or, as far as the open lands extend to the woods: mac, in this word, may be either a derivative from acke, earth, or, more probably, auk, a generic participle for tree or trunk.

21st. The editor of the North American Review directs my attention to Delafield's Antiquities as the subject of a notice for his pages. Delafield appears to have undertaken a course of reading on Mexican antiquities. The result is given in this work, with his conjectures and speculations on the origin of the race. The cause of antiquarian knowledge is indebted to him for the first publication of the pictorial Aztec map of Butturini.

24th. Called on Mr. Ramsey Crooks, president of the American Fur Company, at his counting-house, in Ann street. He gave me an interesting sketch of his late tour from La Pointe, Lake Superior, to the Mississippi. The Chippewas were not paid at La Pointe till October. This made him late at the country. The St. Croix River froze before he reached the Mississippi, and he went down the latter, from St. Peter's, in a sleigh. Bonga had been sent to notify the Milles Lacs, Sandy Lake, and Leoch Lake Indians to come to the payments. When he reached Leech Lake, Guelle Plat had gone, with twenty-four canoes, to open a trade with the Hudson's Bay Factor, at Rainy Lake. Mr. Crooks thinks that the dissatisfaction among these bands can be readily allayed by judicious measures. Thinks the Governor of Wisconsin ought to call the chiefs together at some central point within the country, and make explanations. That the payments, in future, should be made at one place, and not divided. That the Leech Lake, and other bands living without the ceded district, ought not to participate in the annuities.

Mr. Crook's manner is always prompt and cordial. He concentrates, in his reminiscences, the history of the fur trade in America for the last forty years. I have always thought it a subject of regret, that such a man should not have kept a journal. There was much, it is true, that could not be put down, and he was always so exclusively an active business man that mere literary memoranda never attracted his attention; they were not adverse to his tastes. He has nearly, I should judge, recovered from the severe hardships and privations which attended his perilous journey across the Rocky Mountains, on the abandonment of Astoria, on the Pacific, in 1812.

29th. Texas and Florida continue to be the rallying points of Indian warfare. The frontier of Texas is harassed by wandering parties of Indians. A Mr. Morgan, who resided near the falls of Brazos, had been killed, and three women carried off by a band of fifteen savages. A company of rangers was sent in pursuit.

The Florida War still lingers, without decisive results. The New Orleans Bee says that General Taylor has been very active, the past season, in trying to bring it to a close. A writer from Tampa Bay, of the 25th instant, who appears to have good knowledge of matters, states three causes, particularly as opposing a successful prosecution and consummation of it, namely:—

"1st. An ignorance of the topography of Florida—the position of the numerous swamps and hummocks, the usual hiding-places of the Indians.

"2d. A want of proper interpreters.

"3d. A countervailing influence from some unknown quarter."

He supports his view as follows: "It is a well known fact that, previous to the year 1836, the portion of Florida south of the Military Road from Tampa to Garey's Ferry was unexplored and unknown, and since that time the only information has been derived from the hasty reconnoissances of officers, made in the progress of the several divisions of the army through the country. Since the organization of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, several have been sent to this country, and are now actively engaged in making surveys and plotting maps. Could the information they are expected to give have been known even before the commencement of the last campaign, it would have aided materially in the subjugation of the enemy. A correct knowledge of this country is needed more especially because such another theatre of war probably has not a place on the earth; a theatre so peculiarly favorable to the Indians and disadvantageous to the white man. Swamps may be delineated as well perhaps as any other natural object; but such swamps as are found in Florida, are not to be imitated in painting or described by words. As an instance, I may mention the Halpataokee or Alligator Water, which is made up of small islands, surrounded by water of various depths, through which for two miles the road of the army passed during the winter of 1838."

"2d. The only Interpreters are Seminole negroes, who, for the most part, find it difficult to understand English. As an instance of the numerous mistakes occurring daily, may be mentioned the following: The General told the interpreter to say to Nettetok Emathla, that 'patience and perseverance would accomplish everything.' While he was speaking to the Indian, the remark was made that he did not know the meaning of the sentence. When questioned the following day, he said 'patience and 'suverance mean a little book,' Our laughter convinced him he was mistaken, and he said 'patience mean you must be patien; I don't zackly know what 'suverance do mean, sar!' Numerous errors of this nature are doubtless occurring daily, and among a people who are so scrupulously nice and formal in their 'talks,' such trifling mistakes may be injurious.

"3d. We are now to speak of the most important difficulty in the way of termination of hostilities, and the removal of the Seminoles to their new homes beyond the 'Muddy Water.' That the Indians are and have been supplied by whites, Americans or Spaniards, is a point so decisively settled that 'no hinge is left whereon to hang a doubt.' However shameless it may appear, proofs are not wanting to establish the fact, so much to the discredit of our patriotism. When Coacoochee escaped from St. Augustine he carried with him bolts of calico and factory cloths, which he afterwards sold to the Indians in the woods for three chalks (six shillings) per yard. It was reported to Colonel Taylor, then at Fort Bassinger, by an Indian woman, who ran away from Coacoochee's camp, that he had one poney packed solely with powder; that he had plenty of lead, provisions, etc., and was determined never to come in or go to Arkansas. On several occasions when Indians have been killed or taken, or their camps surprised, new calico, fresh tobacco, bank bills, and other articles of a civilized character, have been found in their possession. Besides, this, the Indians are constantly reporting in their talks that some persons on the other side of the territory prevent the hostiles from complying with the treaty. Ethlo Emathla, Governor of the Tallahassees, promised the general to be in with his people on a specified day. It is reduced almost to a certainty that he has been prevented from doing so by the representations of some person or persons in a quarter, the name of which charity alone forbids to mention. The only object is, and for a long time has been, to keep entirely out of the way, to hide themselves from the whites, and every effort to bring them to battle, either by sending small or large parties among them, has proved useless. They will not fight, and thirty thousand men cannot find them, broken up as they are into small parties. What then is to be done? Protect the inhabitants of the frontiers, gradually push the Indians south, and at no distant day, the necessary, unavoidable and melancholy consummation must arrive, viz., the expulsion of the last tribe of red men from the soil over which they once roamed the sole lords and possessors."

30th. The oldest man in the Ottawa nation, a chief called Nish-caud-jin-in-a, or the Man of Wrath, died this day at L'Arbre Croche, Michigan. He was between ninety and one hundred years of age, withered and dry, and slightly bent, but still preserving the outlines of a man of strength, good figure, and intellect. What a mass of reminiscences and elements of history dies with every old person of observation, white or red.

Feb. 4th. Mr. James H. Lanman writes respecting the prospects of his publishing a history of Michigan—a subject which I gave him every encouragement to go forward in, while he lived in that State. The theme is an ambitious one, involving as it does the French era of settlements, and the day for handling it effectively has not yet arrived. But the sketches that may be made from easily-got, existing materials, may subserve a useful purpose, with the hope always that some new fact may be elicited, which will add to the mass of materials. "I have been delayed here," he says, "in preparing the book, and the delay has been occasioned by my publishers having failed. It is now, however, stereotyped, and will be out in about a fortnight." [92]

[Footnote 92: He afterwards re-cast the work, and it was published by the Harpers as one of the volumes of their library.]

21st. Mr. Bancroft writes to me, giving every encouragement to bring forward before the public my collections and researches on Indian history and language, and expressing his opinion of success, unless I should be "cursed with a bad publisher."

"Father Duponceau," he says, "won his prize out of your books, and Gallatin owes much to you. Go on; persevere; build a monument to yourself and the unhappy Algonquin race."

Making every allowance for Mr. Bancroft's enthusiastic way of speaking, it yet appears to me that I should endeavor to publish the results of investigations of Indian subjects. My connection with the Johnston family has thrown open to me the whole arcanum of the Indian's thoughts.

I wrote an article for Dr. Absalom Peter's Magazine, expressing my dissent from the very fanciful explanations of the Dighton Rock characters, as given by Mr. Magrusen in the first volume of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians, published at Copenhagen. It appears to me that those characters (throwing out two or three) are the Indian Kekewin—a species of hieroglyphics or symbolic devices, still in vogue among them. To this view of the matter Mr. Bancroft assents. "If you have a proof-sheet of your article on the Daneschrift, send it me. All they say about the Dighton Rock is, I think, the sublime of humbuggery."

What is said in the interpreted Sagas, of the Skroellings or Esquimaux being in New England at the date of Eric's voyage (A. D. 1001) is, I think, problematical. Those tribes are not known to have extended further south than the Straits of Belleisle, about 60 deg., or to parts of Newfoundland. The term deduced from the old journals appear to belong to the Esquimaux proper, rather than to the New England class of the Algonquins. The Esquimaux had the free use of the sound of the letter l, which was not used at all by the N.E. Indians.

Mr. Gallatin, in a letter of Feb. 22, in response to me on this subject, says: "The letter L occurs in every Esquimaux dialect of which I have any knowledge. Thus heaven or sky, is in Greenland, Killak; Hudson's Bay, Keiluk; Kadick Islands, Kelisk; Kotzebue's Sound, Keilyak; Asiatic Tshuktchi, Kuelok.

"I am not so certain about the v, which I find used only by Egede, or Crantz (not distinguished from each other in my collection) for the Greenland dialect. In their conjurations I find 'we (sing. and dual) wash them' Ernikp-auvut, and Ernikp-auvuk. In the Mithradites, the same letter v is repeatedly used in dual examples of the Greenland and Labrador dialects, principally (as it appears to me) but not exclusively in the pronominal terminations, picksaukonik, akeetvor, tivut, Profetiv-vit! that is, good ours, debtors ours, a prophet art thou.

"By comparing this with the pronouns of the other Esquimaux dialects, I suspect that oo and w in these, are used instead of v. But the difference may arise from that in the mother tongue, or in the delicacy of the ear, of those who have supplied us with other verbal and pronominal forms or vocabularies."

22d, The Indian names may be studied analytically.

Ches (pronounced by the Algonquin Indians Chees), signifies a plant of the turnip family. Beeg is the plural, and denotes water existing in large bodies, such as accumulations in the form of lakes and seas. If these two roots be connected by the usual sound in Algonquin words, thus Ches-a-beeg, a sound much resembling Chesapeake would be produced. The Nanticokes, who inhabited this bay on its discovery, were of the Algonquin stock.

Potomac appears to be a clipped expression, derived, I believe, from Po-to-wau-me-ac. Po-to-wau, as we have it, in Potawattomie, means to make a fire in a place where fires, such as council fires, are usually made. The ac in the word is apparently from ak or wak, a standing tree. The whole appears descriptive of a burning tree, or a burning forest.

Megiddo in the Algonquin means he barks, or a barker. Hence me-giz-ze, an eagle or the bird that barks.



CHAPTER LXVII.

Workings of unshackled mind—Comity of the American Addison—Lake periodical fluctuations—American antiquities—Indian doings in Florida and Texas—Wood's New England's Prospect—Philological and historical comments—Death of Ningwegon—Creeks—Brothertons made citizens—Charles Fenno Hoffman—Indian names for places on the Hudson—Christian Indians—Etymology—Theodoric—Appraisements of Indian property—Algic researches—Plan and object.

1839. Feb. 22d. Hon. Lucius Lyon, Senator in Congress from Michigan, writes, informing me of the movements of political affairs in that State. The working of our system in the new States is peculiar. Popular opinion must have its full swing. It rights itself. Natural good sense and sound moral appreciation of right are at work at the bottom, and the lamp of knowledge is continually replenished with oil, by schools and teaching. That light cannot be put out. It will burn on till the world is not only free, but enlightened and renovated.

24th. Washington Irving kindly encloses me a letter to Colonel Aspinwall of London, commending to him my contemplated publication on the oral legends of the North American Indians. "I regret to say," he adds, "that the last time he wrote to me, he was in great uneasiness, apprehending the loss of one of his daughters, who appeared to be in a rapid decline."

25th. Mrs. Jameson, on returning from her trip to the lakes, writes for my opinion on the causes of the phenomenon of the rise in the waters of the lakes. Alluding to this subject, the Superintendent of the works in the Ohio says: "The water of Lake Erie, which has been rising for many years, and has attained a height unequaled in the memory of man, seems to have attained its maximum, and to have commenced its reflux. Since the first day of June last, as I have ascertained by means of graduated rods at different points along the coast of Lake Erie, the water has fallen perpendicularly nineteen inches, and is still falling. The meteorological character of the present season, as compared with that of several previous seasons, clearly shows the cause of the rise and fall of the lakes not to be periodical, as has heretofore been asserted, but entirely accidental. For several years the summers have been cloudy and cold, with a prevalence of easterly winds and rainy weather. The last summer has been excessively warm for the whole season, and of exceeding drought. When it is remembered that the amount of water evaporated over the surface of these vast bodies of water, during a period of warm sunny weather, greatly exceeds that which passes the outlet of one of these lakes (Niagara River, for example), the cause of the phenomenon is apparent."—See Mr. Barrett's inquiries, ante.

26th. The New York Star publishes a notice of Delafield's Antiquities. This handsomely printed and illustrated work contains four things that are new to the antiquarian inquirer: 1. A theory by the author, by which he conceives the Indian race to be descended from the ancient Cuthites, who are Hamitic. This is wrong. 2. A curious and valuable pictographic map of the migration of the Aztecs, not heretofore printed. This is an acquisition. 3. A disquisition of Dr. Lakey, of Cincinnati, on the superiority of the northern to the southern race of red men. This seems true. 4. A preface, by Bishop McIlvaine, showing the importance in all inquiries of the kind, of keeping the record of the Bible strictly in view. This is right.

27th. The Houston Telegraph of this date gays: "A party of about eighty men from Bastrop County, accompanied by Castro and forty Lipan warriors, recently made an expedition into the Comanche country, and, near the San Saba, attacked and routed a large body of Comanches, who, with their women and children, were encamped on a small branch of the stream. About thirty of the Comanche warriors were killed in the engagement, many huts and considerable baggage destroyed, and a large number of horses and mules captured. On their return, however, a few Comanches stole silently into the droves of horses, while feeding at night, and recaptured the whole except ninety-three horses, which the shrewd Castro, with ten of his warriors, had driven far in advance of the main company, and which he subsequently brought in safety to Lagrange. Only two of the citizens of Texas were injured on this expedition."

"General Burlison, at the head of about seventy men, recently encountered a large body of Indians on the Brushy, and, after one or two skirmishes, finding the enemy numerous, retreated to a ravine in order to engage them with more advantage; but the Indians, fearing to attack him in his new position, drew off and retreated into a neighboring thicket. Being unable to pursue them, he returned to Bastrop. It is reported that he has lost three men in this engagement; the loss of the Indians is not known; it, however, must have been considerable, as most of the men under Burlison were excellent marksmen, and had often been engaged in Indian warfare."

March 4th. The N. Y. Evening Post says, that a gentleman from Tallahassee, just arrived at Washington, states that murders by the Indians are of everyday occurrence in that vicinity, and that between the 17th and 21st Feb. fifteen persons had been killed.

5th. Finished the perusal of William Wood's "New England's Prospects," a work of 98 12mo pages, printed at London, 1634. This was fourteen years after the first landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth, and the same year that John Eliot came over. Its chief claim to notice is its antiquity. "Some have thought," he says, "that they (the Indians) might be descendants of the Jews, because some of their words be near unto the Hebrew; but by the same rule they may conclude them to be some of the gleanings of all nations, because they have words which sound after the Greek, Latin, French, and other tongues. Their language is hard to learn, few of the English being able to speak any of it, or capable of the right pronunciation, which is the chief grace of their tongue. They pronounce much after the diphthongs, excluding B and L, which, in our English tongue, they pronounce with much difficulty, as most of the Dutch do T and H, calling a lobster, a nobstan."

The examples of a vocabulary he gives show them to be Algonquins, and not "Skroellings," or Esquimaux, as they are represented to have been by the Scandinavians (vide Ant. Amer.), who visited the present area of Massachusetts in the tenth century.

The close alliance of their language with the existing Chippewa and Ottawa of the north, is shown by the following specimens:—

New England Tribes. Chippewa of Lake Superior. 1634. 1839. Woman, Squa, E-qua. Water, Nip-pe, Ne-be. A raccoon, Au-supp, A se-bun. Daughter, Tawonis, O-dau-nis. A duck, Sea-sceep, She-sheeb. Summer, Se-quan, Se-gwun. Red Squi, Mis-qui. A house, Wig-wam, Weeg-wam.

He divides the tribes into:—

Tarrenteens. Churhers (local tribes even then under instruction). Aberginians (Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, probably). Narragansetts (a tribe of the N.E. Algonquins with dialectic peculiarities). Pequants (" " ") Nepnets (" " ") Connectacuts (" " ") Mohawks (a tribe of Iroquois).

The people whom he calls "Tarrenteens," are clearly Abenakies.

Cotton Mather, L. of E., 1691, p. 78, denominates the Indians "the veriest ruins of mankind. Their name for an Englishman was a knifeman; stone was used instead of metal for their tools; and for their coins they have only little beads, with holes in them, to string them upon a bracelet, whereof some are white, and of these there go six for a penny; some are black or blue, and of these go three for a penny; this wampum, as they call it, is made of shell fish, which lies upon the sea-coast continually."

P. 79. "Nokehick, that is, a spoonful of parched meal with a spoonful of water, which will strengthen them to travel a day."

"Reading and writing are altogether unknown to them, though there is a stone or two in the country that has unaccountable characters engraved upon it."

The intention of the King in granting the royal charter to Massachusetts was, says Cotton Mather:—

"To win and invite the natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind, and the Christian faith, is our Royal intentions, and the adventurer's free profession is the principal end of the plantation."—Life of Eliot, p. 77.

10th. Died at Little Traverse Bay, on Lake Michigan, Ningwegon, or the Wing, the well-known American-Ottawa chief—a man who distinguished himself for the American cause at Detroit, in 1812, and was thrown into prison by the British officers for his boldness in expressing his sentiments. He received a life annuity under the treaty of 28th March, 1836.

11th. Received notice of my election as a corresponding member of the Brooklyn Lyceum.

12th. A small party of chiefs of the Seneca tribe under the command of "Blacksmith," successor to Red Jacket, arrived in this city yesterday from Washington, and took lodgings at the Western Hotel in Courtland Street. They were received by the Mayor at the Governor's room about 12 o'clock. In the address made by one of the number, it was stated that the object of their visit had been to urge upon the President the impropriety of driving them from their present possessions.

13th, PEACE AMONG THE INDIANS.—The two nations of Upper and Lower Creeks, who were hostile while residing east of the Mississippi, have, in their new homes in Arkansas, united in general council, at which fifteen hundred were present. The oratory on this occasion, of smoking the calumet, is described as of the highest order.

14th. Judge Bronson, of Florida, last evening, at a party at his cousin's (Arthur Bronson, 46 Bond Street, N. Y.), states that, as Chairman of a Committee in Congress, a few years ago, he had reported a bill for allowing the Brotherton Indians to hold their property in Wisconsin individually, and to enjoy the rights of citizenship; and that this bill passed both houses.

20th. Went to dine with Charles Fenno Hoffman, at his lodgings in Houston Street. Found his room garnished with curiosities of various sorts, indicative, among other things, of his interest in the Indian race. A poet in his garret I had long heard of, but a liberal gentlemanly fellow, surrounded by all the elegances of life, I had not thought of as the domicil of the Muses. Mr. Hoffman impressed me as being very English in his appearance and manners. His forehead is quite Byronic in its craniological developments. His eye and countenance are of the most commanding character. Pity that such a handsome man, so active in everything that calls for the gun, the rod, the boat, the horse, the dog, should have been shorn of so essential a prerequisite as a leg. His conversational powers are quite extraordinary. I felt constantly as if I were in the presence of a lover of nature and natural things; a bon vivant perhaps, or an epicure, a Tom Moore, in some sense, whose day-dreams of heaven are mixed up with glowing images of women and wine.

27th. I was directed from Washington to relieve the principal disbursing officer at Detroit. Here then my hopes of visiting Europe are blown sky high for the present. I must return to the north, and, so far as labor is concerned, "heap Pelion on Ossa."

April 6th. There is hardly a word in the Indian languages which does not readily yield to the power of analysis. They call tobacco, Ussama. Ussa, means to put (anything inanimate). Ma, is a particle denoting smell. The us, in the first syllable, is sounded very slight, and often, perhaps, nearly dropt, and the word then seems as if spelt Sa ma. The last vowel is broad.

8th. Left the city for Detroit. In ascending the Hudson, with so good an interpreter at my side as Mrs. Schoolcraft, whom I have carried through a perfect course of philological training in the English, Latin, and Hebrew principles of formation, I analyzed many of the old Indian names, which, until we reached Albany, are all in a peculiar dialect of the Algonquin.

SING SING.—This name is the local form of the name for rocks, and conveys the idea of the plural in the terminal letter. Os-sin in modern Algonquin (the Chippewa dialect), is stone, or rock. Ing, is the local form of all nouns proper. The term may be rendered simply place of rocks.

NYAC.—This appears to be the name of a band of Indians who lived there. The termination in ac, is generally from acke, land.

CROTON.—Historically, this is known to have been the name of a noted Indian chief, who resided near the mouth of the river. The word appears to be derived from noetin, a wind. If we admit the interchange of sounds of n for r, as being made, and the ordinary change of t for d, between the Holland and Indian races, this derivation is probable. The letter c seems to be the sign of a pronoun.

TAPPAN SEA.—It is perceived from Vanderdonk, and from old maps and records, that a band of Indians lived here, who were called the "Tappansees."

POUGHKEEPSIE is a derivative of Au-po-keep-sing, i.e., Place of shelter. The entrance of the Fall Kill into the Hudson is the feature meant.

COXACKIE, is evidently made up in the original from kuk, to cut, and aukie, earth, which was, probably, in old days, as it is in fact yet, a graphic description of a ridge cut and tumbled in by the waters of the Hudson pressing hard on that shore.

CLAVERACK is not Indian. Clove, in the Hollandais, is an opening or side-gorge in the valley. Rack, is a reach or bend in the river, the whole length of which was known, as we see, to the old skippers as separate racks. The reach of cloves began at what is now the city of Hudson, the old Claverack landing.

TAWASENTHA.—Normanskill is the first Iroquois name noticed. It means the hill of the dead. Albany itself has taken the name of a Scottish dukedom for its ancient Iroquois cognomen, Ske-nek-ta-dea: of this compound term, Ske is a propositional particle, and means beyond; nek is the Mohawk name for a pine; and the term ta-dea is descriptive of a valley.

18th. Reached Detroit in the steamer "Gen. Wayne," and assumed the duties of my new appointment. One of the earliest Washington papers I opened, gave an account of the death of Mr. William Ward, a most valuable clerk in the Indian Bureau; a man of a fine literary taste, who formerly edited and established the North-west Journal, at the City of Detroit.

19th. A singular denouement is made this morning, which appeals strongly to my feelings. On getting in the stage at Vernon, in Western New York, a gentleman of easy manners, good figure, and polite address, whom we will call Theodoric, kindly made way for me and my family, which led us to notice him, and we traveled together quite to Detroit, and put up at the same hotel. This morning a note from him reveals him to be a young Virginian, seeking his fortune west, and out of funds, and makes precisely such an appeal as it is hard, and wrong in fact, to resist. I told Theodoric to take his trunk and go, by the next steamer, to my house at Mackinack, and I should be up in a short time, and furnish him employment in the Indian department.

25th. Rev. Mr. Lukenbach, of the Moravian towns, Canada, writes, that the proportional annuity of the Christian Indians, for 1838, is unpaid. He says they were paid 33/100ths, in 1837, being one-third of the original annuity. He states that Mr. Vogler and Mr. Mickeh arrived on the Kanzas with upwards of seventy souls, having left nearly one hundred at Green Bay, who are to follow them; and that these two men have commenced a new mission among the Delawares. Mr. L. says that there are but about one hundred and twenty souls left, who propose to remain in Canada with him.

30th. Ke-bic! An exclamation of the Algonquins in passing dangerous rocky shores in their canoes, when the current is strong. Query. Is not this the origin of the name Quebec?

May 2d. Major Garland, my predecessor in the disbursements, writes from Washington: "You have a heavy task on your hands for this season; and, in addition to the hands of Briareus, you will need the eyes of Argus."

3d. I made the payments to the Saginaw chiefs in specie, under the treaty of the 14th of January, 1837.

10th. Mr. F.W. Shearman, the able and ingenious editor of the Journal of Education, writes from Marshall, that it receives an increased circulation and excites a deeper interest in the people, with his plans for further improvements.

16th. Letters from Mackinack informs me that the Ottawas design leaving their location in the United States for the Manitouline Islands, in Canada, where inducements are held out to them by agents of the British government. They fear going west: they cling to the north.

20th. The Harpers, publishers at New York, send me copies of the first issue of my Algic Researches, in two vols., 12mo. They intend to publish the work on the 1st proximo.

23d. Letters from Washington speak of the treasury as being low in specie funds.

24th. Sales of the lands of the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewas, are made at the Land Office in Detroit, in conformity with the treaty of May 9th, 1836. The three years that have elapsed in this operation, have brought the prices of lands from the summer heat to the zero of prices.

27th. Na, in the Algonquin language, means excellent or transcendent, and wa, motion. Thus the names of two chiefs who visited me to day on business, are Na-geezhig, excellent or transcendent day, and Ke-wa-geezhig, or returning cloud. Whether the word geezhig shall be rendered day, or cloud, or sky, depends on the nature of its prefix. To move back is ke-wa, and hence the prefixed term to the latter name.

June 4th. Received from Col. De Garme Jones, Mayor of Detroit, sundry manuscript documents relative to the administration of Indian affairs of Gov. Hull, of the dates of 1807, '8 and '9.

Mr. Johnstone, of Aloor, near Edinburgh, Scotland, brings me a note of introduction from Gen. James Talmadge, of New York. Mr. J. is a highly respected man at home, and is traveling in America to gratify a laudable curiosity.

7th. Reached Mackinack, on board the steamer Great Western, Capt. Walker.

10th. The Albany Evening Journal has a short editorial under the head of Algic Researches: "Such is the title of a work from our countryman Schoolcraft, which the Harpers have just published, in two volumes. It consists of Tales and Legends, which the Author has gleaned in the course of his long and familiar intercourse with the children of the Forest, illustrating the mental powers and characteristics of the North American Indians.

"Mr. Schoolcraft has traveled far into the western wilds. He has lived much with the Indians, and has studied their character thoroughly. He is withal a scholar and a gentleman, whose name is a sufficient guarantee for the excellence of all he writes."

11th. I set out to complete the appraisement of the Indian improvements on the north shore of Lake Huron, under the 8th article of the treaty of March 28th, 1836.

12th. Paid the Indians of L'Arbre Croche villages at Little Traverse Bay, the amount of the appraisement of their public improvements, made under the treaty of 1836.

13th. Proceed to Grand Traverse Bay, to view the location of a mission by Messrs. Dougherty and Fleming. Found it located on the sands, near the bottom of the bay, where a vessel could not unload, at a point so utterly destitute of advantages that it would not have been possible to select a worse site in the compass of the whole bay, which is large, and abounds in ship harbors. Condemned the site forthwith, and the same day removed the site of operations to Kosa's village, on a bay near the end of the peninsula. I afterwards encamped on the open lake shore, behind a sand drift, to avoid the force of the wind, and, as soon as the waters of the lake lulled, made the traverse to the Beaver Islands, to appraise the value of the Indian improvements at that place, and, having done this, put across to the main shore north, for the same purpose. In this trip Mr. Turner accompanied me to keep the lists, and Dr. Douglass to vaccine the Indians, the latter of whom reported 214 persons as having submitted to receive the virus.

The Albany papers continue to publish notices of Algic Researches. The Argus of the 13th June, says: "Mr. H.R. Schoolcraft has added another to his claims upon the consideration of the reading public, by a recent work (from the press of the Messrs. Harper), entitled 'Algic Researches, comprising inquiries respecting the mental characteristics of the North American Indians.' It is the first of a series, which the author promises to continue at a future day, illustrative of the mythology, distinctive opinions, and intellectual character of the aborigines. These volumes comprise their oral tales, with preliminary observations and a general introduction. The term Algic, is introduced by the author, in a generic sense, for all the tribes, with few exceptions, that were found in 1600 spread out between the Atlantic and the Mississippi.

"To those who care to look into the philosophy of the Indian character, these oral fictions will be read with interest. They are curious in themselves, and not less so as a material step in the researches that may serve, in the sequel, to unveil the origin, as well as the intellectual traits, of these tribes. They will at least establish the fact of 'an oral imaginative lore' among the aborigines of this continent, of which they give us faithful specimens.

"Probably no man in this country is better qualified to pursue these researches than Mr. Schoolcraft. A long residence in the Indian country, and official intercourse with the tribes, have given him an access to the Indian mind which few have enjoyed, and which none have improved to a greater extent by habits of observation and philosophical investigation. A residence at Mackinaw is of itself calculated to beget, as it is to gratify, a taste for the prosecution of these inquiries. It is described by Miss Martineau as 'the wildest and tenderest piece of beauty that she had yet seen on God's earth.' It is indeed a spot of rare attractiveness. Standing upon the promontory, in the rear of the fort and town, the view embraces to the north the head waters of the Huron and the far-off isles of St. Martin, to the west Green Isle and the straits of Mackinaw, and to the east and south Bois Blanc and the Great Lake. It is a delightful summer retreat, and many are the legends and reminiscences of the scenes of enjoyment passed here in absolute, and we are assured happy, exclusion from the outward world, during the winter months. It has been regarded, at no distant day, as important not only as the rendezvous of the Fur Companies' agents and employers and the Indian traders, but as a government military post. It is still a great resort of the northern Indians. Often their lodges and their bark canoes, of beautiful construction, line the pebbly shore; and the aboriginal habits and mental characteristics may be studied on the spot.

"It is to be hoped that Mr. S. will resume the course of inquiry and research that he has marked out for himself; and that he will be induced to give to the public the results of his long and intimate familiarity with the Indian life and character."

17th. The Detroit Daily Advertiser, of this day, has the following critical notice on the work of Algic Researches, under the head of Indian Tales and Legends.

"This work has just been offered for sale at our book-stores, and we strongly recommend it to all those who feel an interest in the character of our aborigines. It is well known to many of us here, that Mr. Schoolcraft has, for the last several years, been industriously engaged in collecting facts which illustrate the 'mythology, distinctive opinions, and intellectual character' of the Indians. His researches have embraced 'their oral tales, fictitious and historical; their hieroglyphics, music, and poetry; and the grammatical structure of their languages, the principles of their construction, and the actual state of their vocabulary.' The materials he has now on hand afford him the means of fulfilling this extensive plan, and this 'first series' is only a leading publication.

"When the position which Mr. S. has occupied for the last seventeen or more years is recollected, as well as his fitness and exertions to improve all its advantages, we shall at once see the benefit to the literary and scientific world which his researches in these various departments are likely to produce. The subjects which have engaged his attention are regarded with deep interest by the philanthropist, the philologist, the archaeologist, as well as many other liberal inquirers, both in Europe and America, who, amid the scanty facts, cursory observations, and hurried, random conjectures of those who have been favored with a comparatively near view of them, have lamented the want of such deliberate investigations and comparative examinations, continued with sober judgment through a long series of years, as are now offered to the public. We trust that a proper and enlightened patronage will warrant Mr. Schoolcraft in completing his design. No man, possessing his qualifications, has enjoyed his advantages. He has been able to take up, at his leisure, the scattered links of a broken chain, and fit them together. A chaos of aboriginal facts will be reduced, under his hand, to some degree of order.

"Mr. Schoolcraft and Mr. Catlin have done more to preserve the fleeting traits of aboriginal character and history than all their predecessors in this field of inquiry, and none can follow them with the same success, as none can have the same range of subjects before them. The scene is changing with each year, and the past, with respect to the Savages, does not recur. They fall back with no hope to recover lost ground; they diminish with no hope to increase again; they degenerate with no hope to revive in physical or moral strength. Those who have seen them most during the last few years, have seen them best. After observers will find mere fragments, or a heterogeneous mass, in which all original identity is distorted or gone.

"The Tales now published must not be estimated for their intrinsic merit alone. They may have less variety of construction, less beauty of imagination, less singularity of incident, than belong to oriental tales, the productions of more refined times, or more excitable people. But the estimate must not be comparative. They are to be regarded as the type of aboriginal mind, as the measure of intellectual power of our Sons of the Forest; as speaking their sentiments, their hopes and their fears, whatever they were or are, whether elevated or depressed, whether raising the race or sinking it in the scale of untutored nations. Whether they prove a poverty of mental energy, a feebleness of imagination, a want of invention, or the reverse, cannot affect the value of these volumes in the opinion of those who look into them for evidences of the true character of the Indians. Mr. Schoolcraft, or any other gentleman of taste and skill, might have formed out of these materials a series of Tales, highly finished in their unity and design, strikingly colored by fancy, such as would have caught the popular whim. But this was not his object. He has been honest in his renderings of the aboriginal sense, whether pointed or mystical, of the Indian's mythology, whether intelligible or obscure; of their shadowy glimpses of the past and the future; of the beginning and end of things, without alteration or embellishment. Such a work was wanted, and such a work was expected from Mr. Schoolcraft.

"If we have room, we will quote one or two of the shorter tales, such as 'Mon-daw-min, or the origin of Indian corn,' and the 'Celestial Sisters,' both of which are very characteristic, and show, under the garb of much figurative beauty, how Indians appreciate the blessings of a kind Providence, and, how his domestic affections may glow and endure. Indeed, there are few of these tales that would not give interest to our columns, and we shall be pleased to give our readers an occasional taste, provided we thereby induce them to supply themselves with the full feast in their power."

20th. It is stated that the oldest town in the United States is St. Augustine, Florida, by more than forty years. It was founded forty years before Virginia was colonized. Some of the houses are yet standing which are said to have been built more than three centuries ago, that is to say, about 1540. De Soto landed in Florida in 1539. Narvaez, in his unfortunate expedition, landed in 1537. Both these expeditions were confined to the exploration of the country west and north of the Bay of Espiritu Santo, reaching to the Mississippi. De Soto crossed the latter into the southeastern corner of the present State of Missouri, and into the area of Arkansas, where he died.

21st. The Detroit Free Press, of this day, has the following remarks:—

"Much interest is manifested in this work of Mr. Schoolcraft, as a timely rescue from oblivion of an important portion of the great world of mind—important inasmuch as it is a manifestation of two principles of human nature prominent in an interesting variety of the human race, the sense of the marvelous and the sense of the beautiful, or the developments of wonder and ideality. The character of a people cannot be fully understood without a reference to its tales of fiction and its poetry. Poetry is the offspring of the beautiful and the wonderful, and much of it the reader will find embodied in the Indian tales to which the author of the Algic Researches has given an enduring record.

"Much of this work strongly reminds the reader of the Grecian Mythology and the Arabian Nights Entertainments.

"According to one of the Odjibwa tales, the morning star was once a beautiful damsel that longed to go to 'the place of the breaking of daylight." By the following poetic invocation of her brother, she was raised upon the winds, blowing from 'the four corners of the earth,' to the heaven of her hopes:—

Blow winds, blow! my sister lingers From her dwelling in the sky, Where the morn with rosy fingers, Shall her cheeks with vermil dye.

There, my earliest views directed, Shall from her their color take, And her smiles, through clouds reflected, Guide me on, by wood and lake.

"The work abounds with similar beautiful thoughts and inventions.

"Catlin may be called the red man's painter; Schoolcraft his poetical historian. They have each painted in living colors the workings of the Indian mind, and painted nature in her unadorned simplicity. They have done much which, without them, would, perhaps, have remained undone, and become extinct with the Indian race. As monuments of history for future ages, their works are not sufficiently appreciated.

"The author of these volumes has stamped upon his page much of the intellectual existence of the simple children of the forest, and bequeathed us a detail map of their terra incognita—their fireside amusements in legendary lore."

I am willing to notice this and some other criticisms of this work as popular expressions of opinion on the subject. But it is difficult for an editor to judge, from the mere face of the volumes, what an amount of auxiliary labor it has required to collect these legends from the Indian wigwams. They had to be gleaned and translated from time to time. Seventeen years have passed since I first began them—not that anything like this time, or the half of it, has been devoted to it. It was one of my amusements in the long winter evenings—the only time of the year when Indians will tell stories and legends. They required pruning and dressing, like wild vines in a garden. But they are, exclusively (with the exception of the allegory of the vine and oak), wild vines, and not pumpings up of my own fancy. The attempts to lop off excrescences are not, perhaps, always happy. There might, perhaps, have been a fuller adherence to the original language and expressions; but if so, what a world of verbiage must have been retained. The Indians are prolix, and attach value to many minutiae in the relation which not only does not help forward the denouement, but is tedious and witless to the last degree. The gems of the legends—the essential points—the invention and thought-work are all preserved.

Their chief value I have ever thought to consist in the insight they give into the dark cave of the Indian mind—its beliefs, dogmas, and opinions—its secret modes of turning over thought—its real philosophy; and it is for this trait that I believe posterity will sustain the book.

A literary friend, of good judgment, of Detroit, writes (19th): "Your tales have reached me, and I have read them over with a deep interest, arising from a double source—the intrinsic value of such stories and the insight they give of Indian intellect and modes of thought. They form a truly important acquisition to our literary treasures, as they throw a light oft the Indian character which has been imparted from no other quarter. They form a standard by which to determine what is true and what is false in the representations made heretofore of the aboriginal nations on most prominent subjects. No one will doubt that you render the genuine Indian mind and heart. Those who conform to these renderings will pass muster; the rest will be rejected. Let Mr. Cooper and others be thus measured."

24th. Muk-kud-da Ka-niew (or the Black War Eagle), chief of the coasts of Arenac, brought me an antique pipe of peculiar construction, disinterred at Thunder Bay. It was found about six feet underground; and was disclosed by the blowing down of a large pine, which tore up a quantity of earth by its roots. The tree was two fathoms round, and would make a large canoe. With the pipe were found two earthen vases, which broke on taking them up. In these vases were some small bones of the pickerel's spine. He saw also the leg bones of an Indian, but the upper part of the skeleton appeared to be decomposed, and was not visible. He thinks the tree must have grown up on an old grave. The pipe consisted of a squared and ornamented bowl, with a curved and tapering handle, all made solid from a sort of coarse terra cotta. He says it was used by taking the small end in the mouth, and thinks such was the practice of the ancient Indians, although the mode is now so different by their descendants. The chief ornament consists of eight dots on each face, separated by longitudinal strokes, leaving four in a compartment. If the tree was four feet diameter, as he states, it denotes an ancient occupation of the shores of Lake Huron, which was probably of the old era of the mining for copper in Lake Superior.



CHAPTER LXVIII.

American antiquities—Michilimackinack a summer resort—Death of Ogimau Keegido—Brothertons—An Indian election—Cherokee murders—Board of Regents of the Michigan University—Archaeological facts and rumors—Woman of the Green Valley—A new variety of fish—Visits of the Austrian and Sardinian Ministers to the U.S.—Mr. Gallup—Sioux murders—A remarkable display of aurora borealis—Ottawas of Maumee—Extent of auroral phenomena—Potawattomie cruelty—Mineralogy—Death of Ondiaka—Chippewa tradition—Fruit trees—Stone's preparation of the Life and Times of Sir William Johnson—Dialectic difference between the language of the Ottawas and the Chippewas—Philological remarks on the Indian languages—Mr. T. Hulbert.

1839. June 25th. ALEX V.V. BRADFORD, Esq., of New York, being about to publish a work on American antiquities,[93] solicits permission to use some of my engravings. I am glad to see an increasing interest in our archaeology, and hope to live to see the day when the popular tastes will permit books to be published on the subject.

[Footnote 93: This work was published, I think, in 1841.]

26th. Mrs. Morris brings a letter from Hon. A.E. Wing, of Monroe. She contemplates spending the summer on the island on account of impaired health. The pure air and fine summer climate of Mackinack begin to be appreciated within a year or two by valetudinarians. It is a perfect Montpelier to them. The inhaling of its pure and dry atmosphere in midsummer is found to act very favorably on the digestive organs. No process of health-making gymnastics is prescribed by physicians. They merely direct persons to walk about and enjoy the sights and scenes about them, to saunter along its winding paths, or go fishing or gunning. Its woods are delightful, and its cliffs command the sublimest views. One would think that if the muses are ever routed from the bare hills of Olympus and the springs of Helicon, they would take shelter in the glens of Michilimackinack, where the Indian pukwees, or fairies, danced of old. I received intelligence of the death of Ogimau Keegido (Speaker Chief), the head sachem of the Saginaws. He had indulged some time in drinking, and, after getting out of this debauch, was confined by sickness three days. Death came to his relief. Some years ago this man met with an accident by the discharge of a gun, by which his liver protruded; he took his knife and cut off a small piece, which he ate as a panacea. He was a man of strong passions and ungoverned will. He visited Washington in 1836, and, with other chiefs, sold the Saginaw reservations.

The party of Saginaws who brought me the above information had among them twenty-two orphan children, whose parents had died of small-pox. They were on their way to the Manitoulines.

28th. Mud-je-ke-wis, a minor chief of Grand Traverse Bay, surrenders a belt of blue and white wampum, and a gilt gorget, which he had received from some officer of the British Indian Department in Canada, saying he renounces allegiance to that government, and reports himself, from this day, as an American.

29th. Chingossamo (Big Sail), of Cheboigan, having migrated to the Manitouline Islands with thirteen families, about seventy-nine souls, an election was this day held, at this office, by the Indians, to supply the place of ruling chief. Sticks, of two colors, were prepared as ballots for the two candidates. Of these, Keeshowa received two-thirds, and was declared duly elected. I granted a certificate of this election. The present population is reduced to forty-four souls, who live in thirteen families. This band are Chippewas.

Gen. Scott arrives at this post, on a general tour of inspection of the northern posts, and proceeds the same day to Sault St. Marie, accompanied by Maj. Whiting.

July 2d. The Wisconsin Democrat, of this date, contains an interesting sketch of the history of the Brotherton Indians, which is represented to be "composed of the descendants of the six following named tribes of Indians, viz., the Naragansetts, of Rhode Island; the Stoningtons, or Pequoits, of Groton, Connecticut; the Montauks, of Long Island; the Mohegans, Nianticks, and Farmington Indians, also of Connecticut. Several years before the American Revolution, a single Indian of the Montauk tribe left his nation and traveled into the State of New York. He had no fixed purpose in view more than (as he expressed it) to see the world. During his absence, however, he fortunately paid a visit to the Oneidas, then a very large and powerful tribe of Indians residing in the State of New York. With them he concluded to rest a short time. They, discovering that he possessed 'some of the white man's learning,' employed him to teach a common reading and writing school among them. He remained with them longer than he at first intended. During this time the Oneida chief made many inquiries respecting his (the Montauk) tribe, and the other tribes before mentioned, and received, for answer, 'that they had almost become extinct—that their game was fast disappearing—that their landed possessions were very small—that the pure blood of their ancestors had become mixed with both the blood of the white man and the African—-that new and fatal diseases had appeared among them—that the curse of all curses, the white man's stream of liquid fire, was inundating their very existence, and the gloomy prospect of inevitable annihilation seemed to stare them in the face—that no 'hope with a goodly prospect fed the eye.' The Oneida chief, actuated partly with a desire to extend the hand of brotherly affection to rescue the above tribes from the melancholy fate that seemed to await them, and partly with a desire to manifest his deep sense of the valuable services rendered to him and his nation in his having taught among them a school, gave to the schoolteacher a tract of land twelve miles square for the use and benefit of his tribe, and the other tribes mentioned."