Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

“ What greater aid could be given to a lone far off Indian mission, than "a man of faith and prayer." When an observer in the vast panorama of the West and North has seen a poor missionary and his family, living five-hundred miles from the nearest verge of civilization, solitary and desolate, surrounded with heathen red men, and worse than heathen white men, with none out of his little circle to honor God or appreciate his word, it is presumable to him that any reinforcement of help must be hailed as cold water to a parched tongue. ”

“ CHIPPEWA RIVER.--At twelve o'clock precisely we came to the confluence of this fork with the main stream. The Chippewa is a noble mass of water, flowing with a wide sweeping majesty to the Mississippi. It excites the idea of magnitude. Wide plains, and the most sylvan and picturesque hills bound the view. We abandoned our smallest canoe at this point, and, pushing into the central channel of the grand current, pursued for six hours our way to its mouth, where we encamped on a long spit of naked sand, which marked its entrance into the Mississippi. ”

“ He is the soul of hospitality, honor, friendship, and love, and no one can be in his company an hour without loving and admiring a man who gave up everything at home to raise up a family of most interesting children in the heart of the American wilderness. No man's motives have been more mistaken, no one has been more wronged, in public and private, by opposing traders and misjudging governments, than he, and no one I have ever known has a more forgiving and truly gentle and high-minded spirit. ”

“ The public duties of an agent for Indian affairs, if an industrious man, leave him a good deal of leisure on his hands, and, in a position so remote as this, if a man have no inclination for studies or belles lettres, he must often be puzzled to employ his leisure. I amused myself by passing from one literary study to another, and this is ever refreshing to the mind, which tires of one thing. Thus, such amusements as the Appeal of Pontiac, Rise of the West, and the Man of Bronze, found place among graver matters. In this manner, a man without literary society may amuse and instruct himself. ”

“ The ice and snow begin to be burthensome to the eye. We were reconciled to winter, when it was the season of winter; but now our longing eyes are cast to the south, and we are anxious for the time when we can say, "Lo, the winter is past, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." ”

“ Since I began to dip into this topic, I have found myself irresistibly carried forward in the inquiry, and been led to resume it, whenever the calls of business or society have been intermitted. I have generally felt, however, while pursuing it, like a mechanist who is required to execute a delicate and difficult work without suitable implements. Technical words may be considered as the working tools of inquiry, and there seems to be a paucity of terms, in our common systems, to describe such a many-syllabled, aggregated language as the Indian. ”

“ I had always heard the Indian spoken of as a revengeful, bloodthirsty man, who was steeled to endurance and delighted in deeds of cruelty. To find him a man capable of feelings and affections, with a heart open to the wants, and responsive to the ties of social life, was amazing. But the surprise reached its acme, when I found him whiling away a part of the tedium of his long winter evenings in relating tales and legends for the amusement of the lodge circle. ”

“ We pursued our way, under the force of oars, which soon brought us to the mouth of the Ohio, where the captain paused to prepare for stemming the Mississippi. It was now the first day of July, warm and balmy during the mornings and evenings, but of a torrid heat at noon. We were now one thousand miles below Pittsburgh--a distance which it is impossible for any man to realize from the mere reading of books. This splendid valley is one of the prominent creations of the universe. Its fertility and beauty are unequaled; and its capacities of sustaining a dense population cannot be overrated. ”

“ Our population has been thinned off by the departure of every temporary dweller, and lingering trader, and belated visitor, till no one is left but the doomed and fated number whose duty is here, who came here to abide the winter in all its regions, and who cannot, on any fair principle or excuse, get away. They, and they alone, are left to winter here. Of this number I am a resigned and willing unit, and I have endeavored to prepare for the intellectual exigencies of it, by a systematic study and analysis of the Indian language, customs, and history, and character. ”

“ Few places on the continent have been so celebrated a locality, for so long a period, of wild and unlicensed enjoyment, for both burgeois and voyageur engaged in the perilous and adventuresome business of the fur trade. Those who speak of its history during the last half of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, depict the periods of the annual return of the traders from their wintering stations in the great panorama of the wilderness, east, west, north, and south, as a perfect carnival, in which eating and drinking and wild carousals prevailed. ”

“ Every vessel, every steamboat, brings up persons of all classes, whose countenances the desire of acquisition, or some other motive, has rendered sharp, or imparted a fresh glow of hope to their eyes. More persons, of some note or distinction, natives or foreigners, have visited me, and brought me letters of introduction this season, than during years before. Sitting on my piazza, in front of which the great stream of ships and commerce passes, it is a spectacle at once novel, and calculated to inspire high anticipations of the future glory of the Mississippi Valley. ”

“ You have asked me many times in the course of this day to take pity on you. How have you the hearts to stand up and ask me for pity, when you have showed no pity yourselves. When those poor disarmed and despairing men implored you to pity their condition, reminding you of your promises, and their generosity in making you presents, when you saw them afterwards submit to be plundered, you gave them not pity but the war club and scalping knife. Did you suppose the God of white men would permit you to go unpunished? ”

“ A spirit of ultraism seems to pervade the whole community. The language of Milton's archdevil 'Evil, be thou my good,' is the creed of modern reformers, or, in other words--anything for a change. What is to come of all this, I have not wisdom even to guess. It is an age of transition, and whether you and I live to see the elements of the moral and political world at rest, is, I think, extremely doubtful. But our consolation should be that the Lord reigns--that he loves good order and truth better than we do--and, blessed be his name, he is able to establish and maintain them. ”

“ Fourteen years before, I had taken the management of these tribes in hand, to conduct their intercourse and to mould and guide their feelings, on the part of the government. They were then poor, in a region denuded of game, and without one dollar in annuities. They were yet smarting under the war of 1812, and all but one man, the noble Wing, or Ningwegon, hostile to the American name. They were now at the acme of Indian hunter prosperity, with every want supplied, and a futurity of pleasing anticipation. They were friends of the American government. I had allied myself to the race. ”

“ While at Detroit during the winter, I had invited Dr. Douglass Houghton to accompany me to vaccinate the Indians. He was a man of pleasing manners and deportment, small of stature, and of a compact make, and apparently well suited to withstand the fatigues incidental to such a journey. He was a good botanist and geologist--objects of interest to me at all times; but especially so now, for I should have considered it inexcusable to conduct an expedition into the Indian country, without collecting data over and above the public duties, to understand its natural history. ”

“ I must acknowledge that one must have a large lot of curiosity to visit these one-fourth civilized regions (that are by far worse than any real wilderness) , for, although they are getting settled at an incredible speed, they don't offer to the mere lover of the beauties of nature, or improvement of human civilization, any great charm. Here nature is rich, but, farmerly or businessly speaking, killingly prosaic--no romance--no Lake Superior water--no scenery--nothing, finally, that could captivate a poetical glance. ”

“ The large number of Indian creditors, who had toiled and suffered and lost property in a trade which is always hazardous, were glad in seeing the ample provision for their payment.
The agents of the government also rejoiced in the happy termination of their labors, and the drum, whose roll had carried away the troops who had been present to preserve order, now converted to a symbol of peace, was never more destined to be beaten to assemble white men to march in hostility against these tribes. They were forever our friends. What war had not accomplished, the arts of peace certainly had. ”

“ The wide vista of waters is perpetually filled by canoes and boats passing across to the opposite settlement on the British shore. The picturesque Indian costume gives an oriental cast to the moving panorama. The azure mountains of Lake Superior rise in the distance. Sailing vessels and steamboats from Detroit, Cleaveland, and Buffalo, occasionally glide by, and to this wide and magnificent view, as seen by daylight, by sunset, and by moonlight, the frequent displays of aurora borealis give an attraction of no ordinary force. ”

“ It breaks the ice on new ground--the ground of independent philosophical thought and inquiry. Truth to tell, we have known very little on the philosophy of the Indian languages, and that little has been the re-echo of foreign continental opinions. It has been written without a knowledge of the Indian character and history. Its allusions have mixed up the tribes in double confusion. Mere synonyms have been taken for different tribes, and their history and language has been criss-crossed as if the facts had been heaped together with a pitchfork. ”

“ What more extraordinary than the current which throws such masses of people daily among us, tearing up, as it were, the old plan of life, and laying the foundations of new social ties in the wilderness. Not a county is settled in the West, the initial steps of which does not furnish legitimate materials for an address which would edify the living generation, and instruct those which are to follow us. A single century hence, and how much tradition will sleep in the grave that might now be rescued! ”

“ These visits of gentlemen of wealth, to the great area of the upper lakes, may be noticed as commencing with this year. People seem to have suddenly waked up in the East, and are just becoming aware that there is a West--to which they hie, in a measure, as one who hunts for a pleasant land fancied in dreams. But the great Mississippi Valley is a waking reality. Fifty years will tell her story on the population and resources of the world. ”

“ We were now daily toiling up the ascent of the summit which separates the basin of Lake Superior from the valley of the upper Mississippi. The exertion was incredible. I expected every day some of the men to give out, but their pride to conquer hardships was, with them, the point of honor. They gloried in feats under which ordinary men would have fainted. To carry a horse load over a portage path which a horse could not walk, is an exploit which none but a Canadian voyageur would sigh for the accomplishment of. ”

“ It should not be an object of disappointment to find that the Indians do not, in their ordinary intercourse, evince those striking traits of exalted and disinterested character which we are naturally accustomed to expect from reading books. Books are, after all, but men's holiday opinions. It requires observation on real life to be able to set a true estimate upon things. The instances in which an Indian is enabled to give proofs of a noble or heroic spirit cannot be expected to occur frequently. In all the history of the seaboard tribes there was but one Pocahontas, one Uncas, and one Philip. ”