Mr. Strong says, Silversmith of Onondaga, has the tradition of the war with the Eries.
Indians in Canada.
It is observed by a report of the Canadian Parliament, that the number of Indians now in Canada is 12,000. Of these, 3,301 are residing in Lower Canada, and the remainder 8,862, in Canada West. The number of Indians is stated to be on the increase, partly from the access of births over the deaths, and partly from a numerous immigration of tribes from the United States. This report must be taken with allowances. It is, at best, but an estimate, and in this respect, the Canadians, like ourselves, are apt to over estimate.
The Indian is a man who has certainly some fine points of character; one would think a man of genius could turn him to account. Why then are Indian tales and poems failures? They fail in exciting deep sympathy. We do not feel that he has a heart.
The Indian must be humanized before he can be loved. This is the defect in the attempts of poets and novelists. They do not show the reader that the red man has a feeling, sympathising heart, and feeling and sympathies like his own, and consequently he is not interested in the tale. It is a tale of a statue, cold, exact, stiff, but without life. It is not a man with man’s ordinary loves and hopes and hates. Hence the failure of our Yamoydens, and Ontwas, and Escatlas, and a dozen of poems, which, although having merits, slumber in type and sheepskin, on the bookseller’s shelf.
Horts’ Corners, Catt.
One seems here, as if he had suddenly been pitched into some of the deep gorges of the Alps, surrounded with cliffs and rocks and woods, in all imaginable wildness.
Cold spring, Allegany river. [Sep. 3.]
Reached the Indian village on the reservation at this place, at 9 o’clock in the morning.
Indians call the place Te-o-ni-gon-o, or De-o-ni-gon-o, which means Cold Spring.