Since the date of my last Letter, a whole long winter has passed off, which I have whiled away on the Gulf of Mexico and about the shores of Florida and Texas. My health was soon restored by the congenial climate I there found, and my dear wife was my companion the whole way. We visited the different posts, and all that we could find to interest us in these delightful realms, and took steamer from New Orleans to this place, where we arrived but a few days since.
Supposing that the reader by this time may be somewhat tired of following me in my erratic wanderings over these wild regions, I have resolved to sit down awhile before I go further, and open to him my sketch-book, in which I have made a great many entries, as I have been dodging about, and which I have not as yet shewed to him, for want of requisite time and proper opportunity.
In opening this book, the reader will allow me to turn over leaf after leaf, and describe to him, tribe after tribe, and chief after chief, of many of those whom I have visited, without the tediousness of travelling too minutely over the intervening distances; in which I fear I might lose him as a fellow-traveller, and leave him fagged out by the way-side, before he would see all that I am anxious to show him.
About a year since I made a visit to the
KICKAPOOS.
At present but a small tribe, numbering six or 800, the remnant of a once numerous and warlike tribe. They are residing within the state of Illinois, near the south end of Lake Michigan, and living in a poor and miserable condition, although they have one of the finest countries in the world. They have been reduced in numbers by whiskey and small-pox, and the game being destroyed in their country, and having little industry to work, they are exceedingly poor and dependent. In fact, there is very little inducement for them to build houses and cultivate their farms, for they own so large and so fine a tract of country, which is now completely surrounded by civilized settlements, that they know, from experience, they will soon be obliged to sell out their country for a trifle, and move to the West. This system of moving has already commenced with them, and a considerable party have located on a tract of lands offered to them on the West bank of the Missouri river, a little north of Fort Leavenworth.[13]
The Kickapoos have long lived in alliance with the Sacs and Foxes, and speak a language so similar that they seem almost to be of one family. The present chief of this tribe, whose name is Kee-an-ne-kuk (the foremost man, [plate 185]), usually called the Shawnee Prophet, is a very shrewd and talented man. When he sat for his portrait, he took his attitude as seen in the picture, which was that of prayer. And I soon learned that he was a very devoted Christian, regularly holding meetings in his tribe, on the sabbath, preaching to them and exhorting them to a belief in the Christian religion, and to an abandonment of the fatal habit of whiskey-drinking, which he strenuously represented as the bane that was to destroy them all, if they did not entirely cease to use it. I went on the sabbath, to hear this eloquent man preach, when he had his people assembled in the woods; and although I could not understand his language, I was surprised and pleased with the natural ease and emphasis, and gesticulation, which carried their own evidence of the eloquence of his sermon.
I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously labouring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought amongst them by enlightened Christians. How far the efforts of this zealous man have succeeded in christianizing, I cannot tell, but it is quite certain that his exemplary and constant endeavours have completely abolished the practice of drinking whiskey in his tribe; which alone is a very praiseworthy achievement, and the first and indispensable step towards all other improvements. I was some time amongst these people, and was exceedingly pleased, and surprised also, to witness their sobriety, and their peaceable conduct; not having seen an instance of drunkenness, or seen or heard of any use made of spirituous liquors whilst I was amongst the tribe.
Ah-ton-we-tuck (the cock turkey, [plate 186]), is another Kickapoo of some distinction, and a disciple of the Prophet; in the attitude of prayer also, which he is reading off from characters cut upon a stick that he holds in his hands. It was told to me in the tribe by the Traders (though I am afraid to vouch for the whole truth of it), that while a Methodist preacher was soliciting him for permission to preach in his village, the Prophet refused him the privilege, but secretly took him aside and supported him until he learned from him his creed, and his system of teaching it to others; when he discharged him, and commenced preaching amongst his people himself; pretending to have had an interview with some superhuman mission, or inspired personage; ingeniously resolving, that if there was any honour or emolument, or influence to be gained by the promulgation of it, he might as well have it as another person; and with this view he commenced preaching and instituted a prayer, which he ingeniously carved on a maple-stick of an inch and a half in breadth, in characters somewhat resembling Chinese letters. These sticks, with the prayers on them, he has introduced into every family of the tribe, and into the hands of every individual; and as he has necessarily the manufacturing of them all, he sells them at his own price; and has thus added lucre to fame, and in two essential and effective ways, augmented his influence in his tribe. Every man, woman and child in the tribe, so far as I saw them, were in the habit of saying their prayer from this stick when going to bed at night, and also when rising in the morning; which was invariably done by placing the fore-finger of the right hand under the upper character, until they repeat a sentence or two, which it suggests to them; and then slipping it under the next, and the next, and so on, to the bottom of the stick, which altogether required about ten minutes, as it was sung over in a sort of a chaunt, to the end.
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