Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

17th. This being St. Patrick's day, we dined with our excellent, warm-hearted, and truly sympathizing friend, Mr. Johnston, in a private way. 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.

28th. I began housekeeping, first on my return from the visit to New York, in the spring of 1825, in the so-called Allen House, on the eminence west of the fort, having purchased my furniture at Buffalo, and made it a pretty and attractive residence. But after the death of my son, the place became insupportable from the vivid associations which it presented with the scenes of his daily amusements.

I determined this day to close the house, and, leaving the furniture standing, we took refuge at Mr. Johnston's. Idolatry such as ours for a child, was fit to be rebuked, and the severity of the blow led me to take a retrospect of life, such as it is too common to defer, but, doubtless, wise to entertain. Why Providence should have a controversy with us for placing our affections too deeply on a sublunary object, is less easy at all times to reconcile to our limited perceptions than it is to recognize in holy writ the existence of the great moral fact. "I will be honored," says Jehovah, "and my glory will I not give to another." It is clear that there is a mental assent in our attachments, in which the very principle of idolatry is involved. If so, why not give up the point, and submit to the dispensations of an inevitable and far-seeing moral government, of affairs of every sort, with entire resignation and oneness of purpose? How often has death drawn his dart fatally since Adam fell before it, and how few of the millions on millions that have followed him have precisely known why, or been entirely prepared for the blow! To me it seems that it has been the temper of my mind to fasten itself too strongly on life and all its objects; to hope too deeply and fully under all circumstances; to grapple, as it were, in its issues with as "hooks of steel," and never to give up, never to despair; and this blow, this bereavement, appears to me the first link that is broken to loosen my hold on this sublunary trust. My thoughts, three years ago, were turned strongly, and with a mysterious power, to this point, namely, my excessive ardor of earthly pursuits, of men's approbation. Here, then, if these reflections be rightly taken, is the second admonition. Such, at least, has been the current of my thoughts since the 13th of the present month, and they were deeply felt when I took my Bible, the first I ever owned or had bought with my own money, and requested that it might be placed as the basis of the little pillow that supported the head of the lifeless child in his coffin.

April 30th. A progress in territorial affairs, in the upper lakes, seems to have commenced; but it is slow. Emigrants are carried further south and west. Slow as it is, however, we flatter ourselves it is of a good and healthy character. The lower peninsula is filling up. My letters, during this spring, denote this. Our county organization is complete. Colonel McKenney, on the 10th, apprises me that he is coming north, to complete the settlement of the Indian boundary, began in 1825, at Prairie du Chien, and that his sketches of his tour of last year is just issued from the press. He adds, "It is rather a ladies' book. I prefer the sex and their opinions. They are worth ten times as much as we, in all that is enlightened, and amiable, and blissful." Undoubtedly so! This is gallant. I conclude it is a gossiping tour; and, if so, it will please the sex for whom it is mainly intended. But will not the graver male sex look for more? Ought not an author to put himself out a little to make his work as high, in all departments, as he can?

Governor C. informs me (April 10th) that he will proceed to Green Bay, to attend the contemplated treaty on the Fox River, and that I am expected to be there with a delegation of the Chippewas from the midlands, on the sources of the Ontonagon, Wisconsin, Chippewa, and Menominie rivers.

Business and science, politics and literature, curiously mingle, as usual, in my correspondence. Mr. M. Dousman (April 10) writes that a knave has worried him, dogged his heels away from home, and sued him, at unawares. Mr. Stuart (April 15) writes about the election of members of council. Dr. Paine, of New York, writes respecting minerals.

May 10th. An eminent citizen of Detroit thus alludes to my recent bereavement: "We sympathize with you most sincerely, in the loss you have sustained. We can do it with the deeper interest, for we have preceded you in this heaviest of all calamities. Time will soothe you something, but the solace of even time will yet leave too much for the memory and affections to brood over."

Another correspondent, in expressing his sympathies on the occasion says: "The lines composed by Mrs. Schoolcraft struck me with such peculiar force, as well in regard to the pathos of style, as the singular felicity of expression, that I have taken the liberty to submit them for perusal to one or two mutual friends. The G---- has advised me to publish them."

14th. National boundary, as established by the treaty of Ghent. Major Delafield, the agent, writes: "Our contemplated expedition, however, is relinquished, by reason of instructions from the British government to their commissioners. It had been agreed to determine the par. of lat. N. 49°, where it intersects the Lake of the Woods and the Red River. But the British government, for reasons unknown to us, now decline any further boundary operations than those provided for under the Ghent treaty.

"We have been prevented closing the 7th article of that treaty, on account of some extraordinary claims of the British party. They claim Sugar, or St. George's Island, and inland, by the St. Louis, or Fond du Lac. Both claims are unsupported by either reason, evidence, or anything but their desire to gain something. We, of course, claim Sugar Island, and will not relinquish it under any circumstances. We also claim inland by the Kamanistiquia, and have sustained this claim by much evidence. The Pigeon River by the Grand Portage will be the boundary, if our commissioners can come to any reasonable decision. If not, I have no doubt, upon a reference, we shall gain the Kamanistiquia, if properly managed; the whole of the evidence being in favor of it."