Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers Part 62

Indian females never go before a man: they never walk in front in the path, or cross in front of the place where a sachem is sitting.

A man will never eat out of the same dish with a woman. The lodge-separation, at the period of illness, is universally observed, where the original manners have not been broken down. If she have no barks, or apukwas to make a separate lodge, a mere booth or bower of branches is made near by.

_10th_. Mrs. Deborah Schoolcraft Johnson died at Albany, aged fifty-four years. The father of this lady (John McKenzie, usually called McKenny) was a native of Scotland, and served with credit in the regiment of Royal Highlanders, before the Revolutionary War, of whose movements he kept a journal. He was present during the siege of Fort Niagara, in 1759, witnessed the death of Gen. Prideau, and partic.i.p.ated in the capture of the works, under Sir William Johnson. He was also engaged in the movements of Gen. Bradstreet, to relieve the fort of Detroit from the hosts brought against it by Pontiac and his confederates three or four years after. He settled, after the war, as a merchant at Anthony's Nose, on the Mohawk, where he was surprised, his store and dwelling-house pillaged, and himself scalped. He recovered from this, as the blow he received had only been stunning, and the copious bleeding, as is usual in such cases, had soon restored consciousness. He then settled at Albany, a place of comparative safety, and devoted himself in old age to instruction. He left a numerous family. His son John, who embraced the medical profession, became a distinguished man in Was.h.i.+ngton County (N.Y.), where his science, as a pract.i.tioner, and his talents as a politician, rendered him alike eminent. But he embraced the politics of Burr, a man whose talents he admired, when that erratic man ran for Governor of the State, and shortly after died. Five daughters married respectable individuals in the county, all of whom have left families. Of such threads of genealogy is the base of society in all parts of America composed. One of her granddaughters, now living in Paris, is a lady ent.i.tled to respect, on various accounts. Deborah, whose death is announced, married in early life, as her first husband, John Schoolcraft, Jr., Esq., a most gifted son of one of the actors and patriots of the revolution--a man who was engaged in one of its earliest movements; who shared its deepest perils, and lived long to enjoy its triumphs. The early death of this object of her choice, induced her in after years to contract a second marriage with an enterprising son of Ma.s.sachusetts (R. Johnson), with whom she migrated to Detroit. Death here again, in a few years, left her free to rejoin her relatives in Albany, where, at last at ease in her temporal affairs, she finally fell a victim to consumption, at a not very advanced age, meeting her death with the calmness and preparedness of a Christian.

"As those we love decay, we die in part."

_25th_. Returned to Michilimackinack, at a quarter past one o'clock, A.M., from my trip to the north, for the appraisal of the Indian improvements.

_31st_. According to observations kept, the average temperature of the month of August (lat. 42) was 69.16 degrees. Last year the average temperature of the same month was sixty-five degrees. The average temperature of the entire summer of 1838 was 70.85; while that of the summer of 1837 was but 65.48. Our lakes must sink with such a temperature, if the comparative degree of heat has been kept up in the upper lakes during the year.

_Sept. 4th_. Troops arrive at Fort Mackinack to attend the payments.

An officer of the army, who has spent a year or so in Florida, and has just returned to Michigan, says: "I have seen much that was well worth seeing, am much wiser than I was before, and am all the better contented with a lot midway of the map. The climate of Florida, during the winter, was truly delicious, but the summers, a part of one of which I saw and felt, are uncomfortable, perhaps more so than our winters. This puts the scales even, if, it do not incline the balance in our favor. The summer annoyances of insects, &c., are more than a counterbalance for our ice and snow, especially when we can rectify their influences by a well-warmed house."

_6th_. A literary friend in Paris writes: "I send a box to Detroit to-day, to the address of Mr. Trowbridge. It contains, for you, upwards of 200 coins, among which is one Chinese, and the rest ancient. You must busy yourself in arranging and deciphering them. I send you, also, some specimens, one from the catacombs of Paris, others from the great excavations of Maestricht, where such large antediluvian remains have been found, also relics from the field of Waterloo. The petrifactions are from Mount Lebanon."

Mr. Palfrey writes in relation to the expected notice of Stone's "Brant," but my engagements have not permitted me to write a line on the subject.

_10th_. Dr. John Locke, of Ohio, announces the discovery in Adams County, in that State, of the remains of an antique fort, supposed to be 600 years old. It is on a plateau 500 feet above Brush Creek, and is estimated at 800 to 1000 feet above the Ohio at low water. It is covered by soil, forest, and trees. Some of the trees in the vicinity are twenty-one feet in diameter. He infers the age from a large chestnut in the enclosure. His data would give A.D. 1238, as the date of the abandonment. We must approach the subject of our western antiquities with great care and not allow hasty and warm fancies to run away with us.

_12th_. A communication from Mr. Rafn informs me that the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Copenhagen, Denmark, have honored me by enrolling my name as one of its members.

_12th_. Congress publishes a statement submitted by the Indian Bureau, showing, 1. That upwards of fifty treaties have been concluded with various tribes since Jan. 1, 1830, for their removal to the west, in accordance with the principles of the organic act of May 28th, 1830. 2.

That by these treaties 109,879,937 acres of land have been acquired. 3.

That the probable value of this land to the United States is $137,349,946. 4. That the total cost of these cessions, including the various expenses of carrying the treaties into effect, is $70,059,505.

_13th_. Major Chancy Bush, a.s.sistant to Major Garland, the Disbursing Agent, arrives with funds to make the annuity payments.

_14th_. The Cherokees West, meet in general council to consult on their affairs, and adopt some measures preparatory to the arrival of the eastern body of the nation. John Ridge, a chief of note of the Cherokees West, states, that this meeting is entirely pacific--entirely deliberative--and by no means of a hostile character, as has been falsely reported.

_18th_. The obscurity which attends an Indian's power of ratiocination may be judged of by the following claim, verbally made to me and supported by some bit of writing, this day, by Gabriel Muccutapenais, an Ottawa chief of L'Arbre Croche. He states that, at one time, a trader took from him forty beavers; at another, thirty beavers and bears; at another, ten beavers, and at another, thirty beavers, and four carca.s.ses of beavers, for all which he received no pay, although promised it. He also served as a clerk or sub-trader for a merchant, for which he was to have received $500, and never received a cent. He requests the President of the United States to pay for all these things. On inquiry, the skins were hunted, and the service rendered, and the wrong received at Athabasca Lake, in the Hudson's Bay Territory, when he was a young man.

He is now about sixty-six years old.

_18th_. The sun's eclipse took place, and was very plainly visible to the naked eye, agreeably to the calculation for its commencement and termination. I took the occasion of its termination (four o'clock, fifty minutes) to set my watch by astronomical time.

_18th_. The Indian payments were completed by Major Bush this day. These payments included the full annuity for 1838, and the deferred half annuity for 1837, making a total of $47,000, which was paid in coin _per capita_.

The whole number of Indians on the pay rolls this year amounted to 4,872, of whom 1,197 were in the Grand River Valley. Last year they numbered, in all, 4,561, denoting an increase of 311. This increase, however, is partly due to emigrations from the south, and partly to imperfect counts last season, and but partially to the increase of _births_ over _deaths_. The annuity divided $12 57 on the North, $22 50 in the Middle, or Thunder Bay district, and $11 50 on the Southern pay list. The Indians requested that these _per capita_ divisions might be equalized, but the terms in the treaty itself create the geographical districts.

CHAPTER LXIV.

Descendant of one spared at the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's--Death of Gen. Clarke--Ma.s.sacre of Peurifoy's family in Florida--Gen. Harrison's historical discourse--Death of an emigrant on board a steamboat--Murder of an Indian--History of Mackinack--Incidents of the treaty of 29th July, 1837--Mr. Fleming's account of the missionaries leaving Georgia, and of the improvements of the Indians west--Death of Black Hawk--Incidents of his life and character--Dreadful cruelty of the p.a.w.nees in burning a female captive--Cherokee emigration--Phrenology--Return to Detroit--University--Indian affairs--Cherokee removal--Indians shot at Fort Snelling.

1838. _Sept. 20th_, COUNT CASTLENEAU, a French gentleman on his travels in America, brings me a note of introduction from a friend. I was impressed with his suavity of manners, and the interest he manifested in natural history, and furnished him some of our characteristic northern specimens in mineralogy. I understood him to say, in some familiar conversation, that he was the descendant of a child saved accidentally at the memorable ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's; and suppose, of course, that he is of Protestant parentage.

_21st_. The St. Louis papers are dressed in mourning, on account of the death of Gen. William Clarke. Few men have acted a more distinguished part in the Indian history of the country. He was widely known and respected by the Indians on the prairies, who sent in their delegations to him with all the pomp and pride of so many eastern Rajahs. Gen.

Clarke was, I believe, the second territorial governor of Missouri, an office which he held until it became a state, when Congress provided the office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for him. He contributed largely, by his enterprise and knowledge, to the prosperity of the west.

The expedition which he led, in conjunction with Capt. Meriwether Lewis, across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, in 1805 and 1806, first opened the way to the consideration of its resources and occupancy.

Without that expedition, Oregon would have been a foreign province.

_24th_. Letters from Florida indicate the war with the Seminoles to be lingering, without reasonable expectation of bringing it soon to a close. Etha Emathla, however, the chief of the Tallasees, is daily expected to come in, his children being already arrived, and he has promised to bring in his people.

But what a war of details, which are hara.s.sing to the troops, whose action is paralyzed in a maze of swamps and mora.s.ses; and how many scenes has it given birth to which are appalling to the heart! A recent letter from a Mr. T.D. Peurifoy, Superintendent of the Alachua Mission, describes a most shocking murder in his own family, communicated to him at first by letter:--

"It informed me," he says, "that the Indians had murdered my family! I set out for home, hoping that it might not prove as bad as the letter stated; but, O my G.o.d, it is even worse! My precious children, Corick, Pierce and Elizabeth, were killed and burned up in the house. My dear wife was stabbed, shot, and stamped, seemingly to death, in the yard.

But after the wretches went to pack up their plunder, she revived and crawled off from the scene of death, to suffer a thousand deaths during the dreadful night which she spent alone by the side of a pond, bleeding at four bullet holes and more than half a dozen stabs--three deep gashes to the bone on her head and three stabs through the ribs, besides a number of small cuts and bruises. She is yet living; and O, help me to pray that she may yet live! My negroes lay dead all about the yard and woods, and my everything else burned to ashes."

_Oct. 1st_. Mr. Palfrey, Editor of the _North American Review_, requests me (Sept. 20th) to notice Gen. Harrison's late discourse on the aboriginal history, delivered before the Ohio Historical Society. The difficulty in all these cares is to steer clear of some objectional theory. To the General, the Delawares have appeared to play the key-note. But it has not fallen to his lot, while bearing a distinguished part in Indian affairs in the west, to examine their ancient history with much attention.

The steamer Madison arrived with a crowd of emigrants for the west, one of whom had died on the pa.s.sage from Detroit. It proved to be a young man named Jesse c.u.mmings, from Groton, N.H., a member of the Congregational Church of that place. Having no pastor, I conducted the religious observance of the funeral, and selected a spot for his burial, in a high part of the Presbyterian burial ground, towards the N.E., where a few loose stones are gathered to mark the place.

_2d_. Wakazo, a chief, sent to tell me that an Ottawa Indian, Ishquondaim's son, had killed a Chippewa called Debaindung, of Manistee River. Both had been drinking. I informed him that an Indian killing an Indian on a reserve, where the case occurred, which is still "Indian country," did not call for the interposition of our law. Our criminal Indian code, which is defective, applies only to the murder of white men killed in the Indian country. So that justice for a white man and an Indian is weighed in two scales.

_3d_. Mrs. Therese Schindler, a daughter of a former factor of the N.W.

Company at Mackinack, visited the office. I inquired her age. She replied 63, which would give the year 1775 as her birth. Having lived through a historical era of much interest, on this island, and possessing her faculties unimpaired, I obtained the following facts from her. The British commanding officers remembered by her were Sinclair, Robinson, and Doyle. The interpreters acting under them, extending to a later period, were Charles Gothier, Lamott, Charles Chabollier, and John Asken. The first interpreter here was Hans, a half-breed, and father to the present chief Ance, of Point St. Ignace. His father had been a Hollander, as the name implies. Longlade was the interpreter at old Fort Mackinack, on the main, at the ma.s.sacre. She says she recollects the transference of the post to the island. If so, that event could not have happened, so as to be recollected by her, till about 1780. Asken went along with the British troops on the final surrender of the island to the Americans in 1796, and returned in the surprise and taking of the island in 1812.

_5th_. Finished my report on a resolution of Congress of March 19th respecting the interference of the British Indian Department in the Indian affairs of the frontier. The treaty of Ghent terminated the war between Great Britain and the United States, but it did not terminate the feelings and spirit with which the Indian tribes had, from the fall of their French power regarded them.

Mr. Warren (Lyman M.), of La Pointe, Lake Superior, visited the office.

Having been long a trader in the north, and well acquainted with Indian affairs in that quarter, I took occasion to inquire into the circ.u.mstances of the cession of the treaty of the 29th of July, 1837, and asked him why it was that so little had been given for so large a cession, comprehending the very best lands of the Chippewas in the Mississippi Valley. He detailed a series of petty intrigues by the St.

Peter's agent, who had flattered two of the Pillager chiefs, and loaded them with new clothes and presents. One of these, Hole-in-the-Day, came down twenty days before the time. The Pillagers, in fact, made the treaty. The bands of the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers, who really lived on the land and owned it, had, in effect, no voice. So with respect to the La Pointe Indians. He stated that Gen. Dodge really knew nothing of the fertility and value of the country purchased, having never set foot on it. Governor Dodge thought the tract chiefly valuable for its pine, and natural mill-power; and there was no one to undeceive him. He had been authorized to offer $1,300; but the Chippewas managed badly--they knew nothing of _thousands_, or how the annuity would divide among so many, and were, in fact, cowed down by the braggadocia of the flattered Pillager war chief, Hole-in-the-Day.

Mr. Warren stated that the _Lac Courtorielle_ band had not united in the sale, and would not attend the payment of the annuities; nor would the St. Croix and Lac du Flambeau Indians. He said the present of $19,000 would not exceed a breech-cloth and a pair of leggins apiece. I have not the means of testing these facts, but have the highest confidence in the character, sense of justice, and good natural judgment of Gov. Dodge. He may have been ill advised of some facts. The Pillagers certainly do not, I think, as a band, own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the Mississippi below Sandy Lake, but their warlike character has a sensible influence on those tribes, quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers. The sources of these rivers are valuable only for their pineries, and their valleys only become fertile below their falls and princ.i.p.al rapids.

From Mr. Warren's statements, the sub-agencies of Crow-wing River and La Pointe have been improperly divided by a _longitudinal_ instead of a _lat.i.tudinal_ line, by which it happens that the St. Croix and Chippewa River Indians are required to travel from 200 to 350 miles up the Mississippi, by all its falls and rapids, to Crow-wing River, to get their pay. The chief, Hole-in-the-Day, referred to, was one of the most hardened, blood-thirsty wretches of whom I have ever heard. Mr. Aitkin, the elder, told me that having once surprised and killed a Sioux family, the fellow picked up a little girl, who had fled from the lodge, and pitched her into the Mississippi. The current bore her against a point of land. Seeing it, the hardened wretch ran down and again pushed her in.

_8th_. The Rev. Mr. Fleming and the Rev. Mr. Dougherty arrived as missionaries under the Presbyterian Board at New York. Mr. Fleming stated that he had been one of the expelled missionaries from the Creek country, Georgia. That he had labored four years there, under the American Board of Commissioners, and had learned the Creek language so as to preach in it, by first _writing_ his discourse. The order to have the missionaries quit the Creek country was given by Capt. Armstrong (now Act. Supt. Western Territory), who then lived at the Choctaw agency, sixty miles off, and was sudden and unexpected. He went to see him for the purpose of refuting the charges, but found Gen. Arbuckle there, as acting agent, who told him that, in Capt. Armstrong's absence, he had nothing to do but to enforce the order.

Mr. Fleming said that he had since been in the Indian country, west, in the region of the Osage, &c., and spoke highly in favor of the fertility of the country, and the advanced state of the Indians who had emigrated.

He said the belt of country immediately west of Missouri State line, was decidedly the richest in point of natural fertility in the region. That there was considerable wood on the streams, and of an excellent kind, namely: hickory, hackberry, cottonwood, cypress, with blackjack on the hills, which made excellent fire-wood.

As an instance of the improvement made by the Indians in their removal, he said that the first party of Creeks who went west, immediately after Mackintosh's Treaty, were the most degraded Indians in Georgia; but that recently, on the arrival of the large body of Creeks at the west, they found their brethren in the possession of every comfort, and decidedly superior to them. He said that the Maumee Ottawas, so besotted in their habits on leaving Ohio, had already improved; were planting; had given up drink, and listened to teachers of the Gospel. He spoke of the Shawnese as being in a state of enviable advancement, &c.

_11th_. First frost at Mackinack for the season.

A friend at Detroit writes: "The Rev. Mr. Duffield (called as pastor here) preached last Sabbath. In the morning, when he finished, there was scarce a dry eye in the house. He excels in the pathetic--his voice and whole manner being suited to that style. He is clear-headed, and has considerable power of ill.u.s.tration, though different from Mr.

Cleaveland. I like him much on first hearing."

_13th_. Finished grading and planting trees in front of the dormitory.

_12th_. The _Iowa Gazette_ mentions the death of Black Hawk, who was buried, agreeably to his own request, by being placed on the surface of the earth, in a sitting posture, with his cane clenched in his hands.

His body was then enclosed with palings, and the earth filled in. This is said to be the method in which Sac chiefs are usually buried. The spectacle of his sepulchre was witnessed by many persons who were anxious to witness the last resting place of a man who had made so much noise and disturbance.

He was 71 years of age, having, by his own account, published in 1833, been born in the Sac village on Rock River, in 1767--the year of the death of Pontiac. In his indomitable enmity to the (_American type of the_) Anglo-Saxon race, he was animated with the spirit of this celebrated chief, and had some of his powers of combination. His strong predilections for the British Government were undoubtedly fostered by the annual visits of his tribe to the depot of Malden. His denial of the authority of the men who, in 1804, sold the Sac and Fox country, east of the Mississippi, may have had the sanction of his own judgment, but without it he would have found it no difficult matter to hatch up a cause of war with the United States. That war seems to have been brooded over many years: it had been the subject of innumerable war messages to the various tribes, a large number of whom had favored his views. And when it broke out in the spring of 1832, the suddenness of the movement, the great cruelties of the onset, and the comparatively defenceless state of the frontier, gave it all its alarming power. As soon as the army could be got to the frontiers, and the Indian force brought to action, the contest was over. The battle of the Badaxe annihilated his forces, and he was carried a prisoner to Was.h.i.+ngton. But he was more to be respected and pitied than blamed. His errors were the result of ignorance, and none of the cruelties of the war were directly chargeable to him. He was honest in his belief--honest in the opinion that the country east of the Mississippi had been unjustly wrested from him; and there is no doubt but the trespa.s.ses and injuries received from the reckless frontier emigrants were of a character that provoked retaliation. He has been compared, in some things, to Pontiac. Like him, he sought to restore his people to a position and rights, which he did not perceive were inevitably lost. He possessed a degree of intellectual vigor and decision of character far beyond the ma.s.s, and may be regarded as one of the princ.i.p.al minds of the Indians of the first half of the 19th century.