Letter XXXVI.Indians at the Sault.Mackinaw,August19, 1846.We were detained two days longer than we expected at the Sault de Ste. Marie, by the failure of the steamer General Scott to depart at the proper time. If we could have found a steamer going up Lake Superior, we should most certainly have quieted our impatience at this delay, by embarking on board of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls, which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer, and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She had just been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where a broad path, with hillocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to the surface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. The moment she touched the water, she stuck fast, and the engineer was obliged to go to Cleveland for additional machinery to move her forward. He had just arrived with the proper apparatus, and the steamer had begun to work its way slowly into the deep water; but some days must yet elapse before she can float, and after that the engine must be put together.Had the Julia Palmer been ready to proceed up the lake, I should certainly have seized the occasion to be present at an immense assemblage of Indians on Madeleine Island. This island lies far in the lake, near its remoter extremity. On one of its capes, called La Pointe, is a missionary station and an Indian village, and here the savages are gathering in vast numbers to receive their annual payments from the United States."There were already two thousand of them at La Pointe when I left the place," said an intelligent gentleman who had just returned from the lake, "and they were starving. If an Indian family has a stock of provisions on hand sufficient for a month, it is sure to eat it up in a week, and the Indians at La Pointe had already consumed all they had provided, and were living on what they could shoot in the woods, or get by fishing in the lake."I inquired of him the probable number of Indians the occasion would bring together."Seven thousand," he answered. "Among them are some of the wildest tribes on the continent, whose habits have been least changed by the neighborhood of the white man. A new tribe will come in who never before would have any transactions with the government. They are called the Pillagers, a fierce and warlike race, proud of their independence, and, next to the Blackfeet and the Camanches, the most ferocious and formidable tribe within the territory of the United States. They inhabit the country about Red River and the head-waters of the Mississippi."I was further told that some of the Indian traders had expressed their determination to disregard the law, set up their tents at La Pointe, and sell spirits to the savages. "If they do, knives will be drawn," was the common saying at the Sault; and at the Fort, I learned that a requisition had arrived from La Pointe for twenty men to enforce the law and prevent disorder. "We can not send half the number," said the officer who commanded at the Fort, "we have but twelve men in all; the rest of the garrison have been ordered to the Mexican frontier, and it is necessary that somebody should remain to guard the public property." The call for troops has since been transferred to the garrison at Mackinaw, from which they will be sent.I learned afterward from an intelligent lady of the half-caste at the Sault, that letters had arrived, from which it appeared that more than four thousand Indians were already assembled at La Pointe, and that their stock of provisions was exhausted."They expected," said the lady, "to be paid off on the 15th of August, but the government has changed the time to nearly a month later. This is unfortunate for the Indians, for now is the time of their harvest, the season for gathering wild rice in the marshes, and they must, in consequence, not only suffer with hunger now, but in the winter also."In a stroll which we made through the Indian village, situated close to the rapids, we fell in with a half-breed, a sensible-looking man, living in a log cabin, whose boys, the offspring of a squaw of the pure Indian race, were practicing with their bows and arrows. "You do not go to La Pointe?" we asked. "It is too far to go for a blanket," was his answer—he spoke tolerable English. This man seemed to have inherited from the white side of his ancestry somewhat of the love of a constant habitation, for a genuine Indian has no particular dislike to a distant journey. He takes his habitation with him, and is at home wherever there is game and fish, and poles with which to construct his lodge. In a further conversation with the half-breed, he spoke of the Sault as a delightful abode, and expatiated on the pleasures of the place."It is the greatest place in the world for fun," said he; "we dance all winter; our women are all good dancers; our little girls can dance single and double jigs as good as any body in the States. That little girl there," pointing to a long-haired girl at the door, "will dance as good as any body."The fusion of the two races in this neighborhood is remarkable; the mixed breed running by gradual shades into the aboriginal on the one hand, and into the white on the other; children with a tinge of the copper hue in the families of white men, and children scarcely less fair sometimes seen in the wigwams. Some of the half-caste ladies at the Falls of St. Mary, who have been educated in the Atlantic states, are persons of graceful and dignified manners and agreeable conversation.I attended worship at the Fort, at the Sault, on Sunday. The services were conducted by the chaplain, who is of the Methodist persuasion and a missionary at the place, assisted by the Baptist missionary. I looked about me for some evidence of the success of their labors, but among the worshipers I saw not one male of Indian descent. Of the females, half a dozen, perhaps, were of the half-caste; and as two of these walked away from the church, I perceived that they wore a fringed clothing for the ankles, as if they took a certain pride in this badge of their Indian extraction.In the afternoon we drove down the west bank of the river to attend religious service at an Indian village, called the Little Rapids, about two miles and a half from the Sault. Here the Methodists have built a mission-house, maintain a missionary, and instruct a fragment of the Chippewa tribe. We found the missionary, Mr. Speight, a Kentuckian, who has wandered to this northern region, quite ill, and there was consequently no service.We walked through the village, which is prettily situated on a swift and deep channel of the St. Mary, where the green waters rush between the main-land and a wooded island. It stands on rich meadows of the river, with a path running before it, parallel with the bank, along the velvet sward, and backed at no great distance by the thick original forest, which not far below closes upon the river on both sides. The inhabitants at the doors and windows of their log-cabins had a demure and subdued aspect; they were dressed in their clean Sunday clothes, and the peace and quiet of the place formed a strong contrast to the debaucheries we had witnessed at the village by the Falls. We fell in with an Indian, a quiet little man, of very decent appearance, who answered our questions with great civility. We asked to whom belonged the meadows lying back of the cabins, on which we saw patches of rye, oats, and potatoes."Oh, they belong to the mission; the Indians work them.""Are they good people, these Indians?""Oh yes, good people.""Do they never drink too much whisky?""Well, I guess they drink too much whisky sometimes."There was a single wigwam in the village, apparently a supplement to one of the log-cabins. We looked in and saw two Indian looms, from which two unfinished mats were depending. Mrs. Speight, the wife of the missionary, told us that, a few days before, the village had been full of these lodges; that the Indians delighted in them greatly, and always put them up during the mosquito season; "for a mosquito," said the good lady, "will never enter a wigwam;" and that lately, the mosquitoes having disappeared, and the nights having grown cooler, they had taken down all but the one we saw.We passed a few minutes in the house of the missionary, to which Mrs. Speight kindly invited us. She gave a rather favorable account of the Indians under her husband's charge, but manifestly an honest one, and without any wish to extenuate the defects of their character."There are many excellent persons among them," she said; "they are a kind, simple, honest people, and some of them are eminently pious.""Do they follow any regular industry?""Many of them are as regularly industrious as the whites, rising early and continuing at their work in the fields all day. They are not so attentive as we could wish to the education of their children. It is difficult to make them send their children regularly to school; they think they confer a favor in allowing us to instruct them, and if they happen to take a little offense their children are kept at home. The great evil against which we have to guard is the love of strong drink. When this is offered to an Indian, it seems as if it was not in his nature to resist the temptation. I have known whole congregations of Indians, good Indians, ruined and brought to nothing by the opportunity of obtaining whisky as often as they pleased."We inquired whether the numbers of the people at the mission were diminishing. She could not speak with much certainty as to this point, having been only a year and a half at the mission, but she thought there was a gradual decrease."The families of the Indians," she said, in answer to one of my questions, "are small. In one family at the village are six children, and it is the talk of all the Indians, far and near, as something extraordinary. Generally the number is much smaller, and more than half the children die in infancy. Their means would not allow them to rear many children, even if the number of births was greater."Such appears to be the destiny of the red race while in the presence of the white—decay and gradual extinction, even under circumstances apparently the most favorable to its preservation.On Monday we left the Falls of St. Mary, in the steamer General Scott, on our return to Mackinaw. There were about forty passengers on board, men in search of copper-mines, and men in search of health, and travellers from curiosity, Virginians, New Yorkers, wanderers from Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, and I believe several other states. On reaching Mackinaw in the evening, our party took quarters in the Mansion House, the obliging host of which stretched his means to the utmost for our accommodation. Mackinaw is at the present moment crowded with strangers; attracted by the cool healthful climate and the extreme beauty of the place. We were packed for the night almost as closely as the Potawottamies, whose lodges were on the beach before us. Parlors and garrets were turned into sleeping-rooms; beds were made on the floors and in the passages, and double-bedded rooms were made to receive four beds. It is no difficult feat to sleep at Mackinaw, even in an August night, and we soon forgot, in a refreshing slumber, the narrowness of our quarters.
We were detained two days longer than we expected at the Sault de Ste. Marie, by the failure of the steamer General Scott to depart at the proper time. If we could have found a steamer going up Lake Superior, we should most certainly have quieted our impatience at this delay, by embarking on board of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls, which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer, and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She had just been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where a broad path, with hillocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to the surface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. The moment she touched the water, she stuck fast, and the engineer was obliged to go to Cleveland for additional machinery to move her forward. He had just arrived with the proper apparatus, and the steamer had begun to work its way slowly into the deep water; but some days must yet elapse before she can float, and after that the engine must be put together.
Had the Julia Palmer been ready to proceed up the lake, I should certainly have seized the occasion to be present at an immense assemblage of Indians on Madeleine Island. This island lies far in the lake, near its remoter extremity. On one of its capes, called La Pointe, is a missionary station and an Indian village, and here the savages are gathering in vast numbers to receive their annual payments from the United States.
"There were already two thousand of them at La Pointe when I left the place," said an intelligent gentleman who had just returned from the lake, "and they were starving. If an Indian family has a stock of provisions on hand sufficient for a month, it is sure to eat it up in a week, and the Indians at La Pointe had already consumed all they had provided, and were living on what they could shoot in the woods, or get by fishing in the lake."
I inquired of him the probable number of Indians the occasion would bring together.
"Seven thousand," he answered. "Among them are some of the wildest tribes on the continent, whose habits have been least changed by the neighborhood of the white man. A new tribe will come in who never before would have any transactions with the government. They are called the Pillagers, a fierce and warlike race, proud of their independence, and, next to the Blackfeet and the Camanches, the most ferocious and formidable tribe within the territory of the United States. They inhabit the country about Red River and the head-waters of the Mississippi."
I was further told that some of the Indian traders had expressed their determination to disregard the law, set up their tents at La Pointe, and sell spirits to the savages. "If they do, knives will be drawn," was the common saying at the Sault; and at the Fort, I learned that a requisition had arrived from La Pointe for twenty men to enforce the law and prevent disorder. "We can not send half the number," said the officer who commanded at the Fort, "we have but twelve men in all; the rest of the garrison have been ordered to the Mexican frontier, and it is necessary that somebody should remain to guard the public property." The call for troops has since been transferred to the garrison at Mackinaw, from which they will be sent.
I learned afterward from an intelligent lady of the half-caste at the Sault, that letters had arrived, from which it appeared that more than four thousand Indians were already assembled at La Pointe, and that their stock of provisions was exhausted.
"They expected," said the lady, "to be paid off on the 15th of August, but the government has changed the time to nearly a month later. This is unfortunate for the Indians, for now is the time of their harvest, the season for gathering wild rice in the marshes, and they must, in consequence, not only suffer with hunger now, but in the winter also."
In a stroll which we made through the Indian village, situated close to the rapids, we fell in with a half-breed, a sensible-looking man, living in a log cabin, whose boys, the offspring of a squaw of the pure Indian race, were practicing with their bows and arrows. "You do not go to La Pointe?" we asked. "It is too far to go for a blanket," was his answer—he spoke tolerable English. This man seemed to have inherited from the white side of his ancestry somewhat of the love of a constant habitation, for a genuine Indian has no particular dislike to a distant journey. He takes his habitation with him, and is at home wherever there is game and fish, and poles with which to construct his lodge. In a further conversation with the half-breed, he spoke of the Sault as a delightful abode, and expatiated on the pleasures of the place.
"It is the greatest place in the world for fun," said he; "we dance all winter; our women are all good dancers; our little girls can dance single and double jigs as good as any body in the States. That little girl there," pointing to a long-haired girl at the door, "will dance as good as any body."
The fusion of the two races in this neighborhood is remarkable; the mixed breed running by gradual shades into the aboriginal on the one hand, and into the white on the other; children with a tinge of the copper hue in the families of white men, and children scarcely less fair sometimes seen in the wigwams. Some of the half-caste ladies at the Falls of St. Mary, who have been educated in the Atlantic states, are persons of graceful and dignified manners and agreeable conversation.
I attended worship at the Fort, at the Sault, on Sunday. The services were conducted by the chaplain, who is of the Methodist persuasion and a missionary at the place, assisted by the Baptist missionary. I looked about me for some evidence of the success of their labors, but among the worshipers I saw not one male of Indian descent. Of the females, half a dozen, perhaps, were of the half-caste; and as two of these walked away from the church, I perceived that they wore a fringed clothing for the ankles, as if they took a certain pride in this badge of their Indian extraction.
In the afternoon we drove down the west bank of the river to attend religious service at an Indian village, called the Little Rapids, about two miles and a half from the Sault. Here the Methodists have built a mission-house, maintain a missionary, and instruct a fragment of the Chippewa tribe. We found the missionary, Mr. Speight, a Kentuckian, who has wandered to this northern region, quite ill, and there was consequently no service.
We walked through the village, which is prettily situated on a swift and deep channel of the St. Mary, where the green waters rush between the main-land and a wooded island. It stands on rich meadows of the river, with a path running before it, parallel with the bank, along the velvet sward, and backed at no great distance by the thick original forest, which not far below closes upon the river on both sides. The inhabitants at the doors and windows of their log-cabins had a demure and subdued aspect; they were dressed in their clean Sunday clothes, and the peace and quiet of the place formed a strong contrast to the debaucheries we had witnessed at the village by the Falls. We fell in with an Indian, a quiet little man, of very decent appearance, who answered our questions with great civility. We asked to whom belonged the meadows lying back of the cabins, on which we saw patches of rye, oats, and potatoes.
"Oh, they belong to the mission; the Indians work them."
"Are they good people, these Indians?"
"Oh yes, good people."
"Do they never drink too much whisky?"
"Well, I guess they drink too much whisky sometimes."
There was a single wigwam in the village, apparently a supplement to one of the log-cabins. We looked in and saw two Indian looms, from which two unfinished mats were depending. Mrs. Speight, the wife of the missionary, told us that, a few days before, the village had been full of these lodges; that the Indians delighted in them greatly, and always put them up during the mosquito season; "for a mosquito," said the good lady, "will never enter a wigwam;" and that lately, the mosquitoes having disappeared, and the nights having grown cooler, they had taken down all but the one we saw.
We passed a few minutes in the house of the missionary, to which Mrs. Speight kindly invited us. She gave a rather favorable account of the Indians under her husband's charge, but manifestly an honest one, and without any wish to extenuate the defects of their character.
"There are many excellent persons among them," she said; "they are a kind, simple, honest people, and some of them are eminently pious."
"Do they follow any regular industry?"
"Many of them are as regularly industrious as the whites, rising early and continuing at their work in the fields all day. They are not so attentive as we could wish to the education of their children. It is difficult to make them send their children regularly to school; they think they confer a favor in allowing us to instruct them, and if they happen to take a little offense their children are kept at home. The great evil against which we have to guard is the love of strong drink. When this is offered to an Indian, it seems as if it was not in his nature to resist the temptation. I have known whole congregations of Indians, good Indians, ruined and brought to nothing by the opportunity of obtaining whisky as often as they pleased."
We inquired whether the numbers of the people at the mission were diminishing. She could not speak with much certainty as to this point, having been only a year and a half at the mission, but she thought there was a gradual decrease.
"The families of the Indians," she said, in answer to one of my questions, "are small. In one family at the village are six children, and it is the talk of all the Indians, far and near, as something extraordinary. Generally the number is much smaller, and more than half the children die in infancy. Their means would not allow them to rear many children, even if the number of births was greater."
Such appears to be the destiny of the red race while in the presence of the white—decay and gradual extinction, even under circumstances apparently the most favorable to its preservation.
On Monday we left the Falls of St. Mary, in the steamer General Scott, on our return to Mackinaw. There were about forty passengers on board, men in search of copper-mines, and men in search of health, and travellers from curiosity, Virginians, New Yorkers, wanderers from Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, and I believe several other states. On reaching Mackinaw in the evening, our party took quarters in the Mansion House, the obliging host of which stretched his means to the utmost for our accommodation. Mackinaw is at the present moment crowded with strangers; attracted by the cool healthful climate and the extreme beauty of the place. We were packed for the night almost as closely as the Potawottamies, whose lodges were on the beach before us. Parlors and garrets were turned into sleeping-rooms; beds were made on the floors and in the passages, and double-bedded rooms were made to receive four beds. It is no difficult feat to sleep at Mackinaw, even in an August night, and we soon forgot, in a refreshing slumber, the narrowness of our quarters.