Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

then a private boarding-house, where my friends, Mr. Carter and Colonel Haines, had rooms. While here, I was introduced one day to a man who subsequently attracted a good deal of notice as a literary impostor. This was a person named Hunter. He said that he derived this name from his origin in the Indian country. He had a soft, compliant, half quizzical look, and appeared to know nothing precisely, but dealt in vague accounts and innuendoes. Having gone to London, the booksellers thought him, it appears, a good subject for a book, and some hack was employed to prepare it. It had a very slender basis in any observations which this man was capable of furnishing; but abounded in misstatements and vituperation of the policy of this government respecting the Indians. This fellow is handled in the Oct. No. of the North American Review, for 1825, in a manner which gives very little encouragement to literary adventurers and cheats. The very man, John Dunn, of Missouri, after whom he affected to have been named, denies that he ever heard of him.

      I had, thus far, seen but little of the Atlantic, except what could be observed in a trip from New Orleans to New York, and knew very little of its coasts by personal examination. I had never seen more of the Chesapeake than could be shown from the head of that noble bay, and wished to explore the Valley of the Potomac. For this purpose, I took passage in a coasting vessel at New York, and had a voyage of a novel and agreeable kind, which supplied me with the desired information. At Old Point Comfort, I remained at the hotel while the vessel tarried. In ascending the Potomac one night, while anchored, a negro song was wafted in the stillness of the atmosphere. I could distinctly hear the following words:--

      Gentlemen, he come from de Maryland shore,

       See how massa gray mare go.

       Go, gray, go,

       Go, gray, go;

       See how massa gray mare go.

      I reached Washington late in March, and sent in my geological report on the 2d of April. Mr. Calhoun, who acknowledged it on the 6th, referred it to the Topographical Bureau. Some question, connected with the establishment of an agency in Florida, complicated my matter. Otherwise it appeared to be a mere question of time. The Secretary of War left me no room to doubt that his feelings were altogether friendly. Mr. Monroe was also friendly.

      Additional Judicial District in Michigan.--J.D. Doty, Esq., wrote to me (April 8th) on this subject. So far as my judgment and observation went, they were favorable to this project. Besides, if I was to become an inhabitant of the district, as things now boded, it would be desirable to me to dwell in a country where the laws, in their higher aspects, were periodically administered. I had, therefore, every reason to favor it.

      Skeptical Views of the Mosaical Chronology.--Baptiste Irvine, Esq., in referring to some criticism of his in relation to the discovery of fossils by a distinguished individual, brings this subject forward in a letter of April 19th. This individual had written to him, impugning his criticisms.

      "I regret," he observes, "the cause, and shall endeavor to give publicity to his (my friend's) observations; though hardly necessary to him, they may yet awaken some ideas in the minds of the people on the wonders of physics I had almost said the slow miracles of creation. For if ever there was a time when matter existed not, it is pretty evident that millions of years were necessary to establish order on chaos, instead of six days. Let Cuvier, &c., temporize as they may. However, it is the humble allotment of the herd to believe or stare; it is the glory of intelligent men to acquire and admire." "For the memoir I am very thankful, and I perceive it alters the case."

      April 22d. Mount Vernon.--In a pilgrimage to this spot, if political veneration may assume that name, I was accompanied by Honorable Albert H. Tracy, Mr. Ruggles, and Mr. Alfred Conkling of the House of Representatives, all of New York. We took a carriage, and reached the hallowed place in good season, and were politely admitted to all the apartments and grounds, which give interest to every tread. I brought some pebbles of common quartz and bits of brown oxide of iron, from the top of the rude tomb, and we all broke branches of the cedars growing there. We gazed into the tomb, through an aperture over the door, where bricks had been removed, and thought, at last, that we could distinguish the coffin.

      Human Feet figured on Rock at St. Louis.--The Honorable Thomas H. Benton, in a letter of 29th April, expresses the opinion that these are antiquities, and not "prints," and that they are of the age of the mounds on the American bottom.

      Mineralogy.--J.D. Doty, Esq., transmits (May 6th) from the vicinity of Martinsburg, New York, specimens of the geological structure of that neighborhood.

      Austin's Colony.--"What you have said to me heretofore, concerning Mr. Austin's settlement in Texas, has rather turned my attention in that direction. Have you any means of communicating with your friend? What are your views of that country?"

CHAPTER IX.

       Table of Contents

      Appointed an agent of Indian affairs for the United States at Saint Mary's--Reasons for the acceptance of the office--Journey to Detroit--Illness at that point--Arrival of a steamer with a battalion of infantry to establish a new military post at the foot of Lake Superior--Incidents of the voyage to that point--Reach our destination, and reception by the residents and Indians--A European and man of honor fled to the wilderness.

      1822. At length Congress passed an act, which left Mr. Calhoun free to carry out his intentions respecting me, by the creation of a separate Indian agency for Florida. This enabled him to transfer one of the western agencies, namely, at Vincennes, Indiana, where the Indian business had ceased, to the foot of the basin of Lake Superior, at the ancient French village of Sault de Ste. Marie, Michigan. Had not this act passed, it would have been necessary to transfer this agency to Florida, for which Mr. Gad Humphreys was the recognized appointee. Mr. Monroe immediately sent in my nomination for this old agency to the Senate, by whom it was favorably acted on the 8th of May. The gentleman (Mr. J.B. Thomas, Senator from Illinois) whose boat I had been instrumental in saving in my descent of the Ohio in the spring of 1818, I believe, moved its confirmation. It was from him, at any rate, that I the same day obtained the information of the Senate's action.

      I had now attained a fixed position; not such as I desired in the outset, and had striven for, but one that offered an interesting class of duties, in the performance of which there was a wide field for honorable exertion, and, if it was embraced, also of historical inquiry and research. The taste for natural history might certainly be transferred to that point, where the opportunity for discovery was the greatest. At any rate, the trial of a residence on that remote frontier might readily be made, and I may say it was in fact made only as a temporary matter. It was an ancient agency in which General Harrison had long exercised his superior authority over the fierce and wild tribes of the West, which was an additional stimulus to exertion, after its removal to Lake Superior.

      I called the next day on Mr. Calhoun, to express my obligation, and to request instructions. For the latter object, he referred me to General Cass, of Detroit, who was the superintendent of Indian affairs on the North-Western frontier, and to whom the policy of pushing an agency and a military post to that point is, I believe, due.

      I now turned my face to the North, made a brief stay in New York, hurried through the western part of that State to Buffalo, and ascended Lake Erie to Detroit. At this point I was attacked with fever and ague, which I supposed to have been contracted during a temporary landing at Sandusky. I directed my physician to treat it with renewed doses of mercury, in quick succession, which terminated the fever, but completely prostrated my strength, and induced, at first tic douloureux, and eventually a paralysis of the left cheek.

      The troops destined for the new post arrived about the beginning of July. They consisted of a battalion of the 2d Regiment of Infantry, under Colonel Brady, from garrison duty at Sackett's Harbor, and they possessed every element of high discipline and the most efficient action, under active officers. Brady was himself an officer of Wayne's war against the Indians, and had looked danger steadily in the face on the Niagara frontier, in the Late War. In this condition, I hastily snatched