4th. Gov. Cass, who has proceeded to Green Bay as a Commissioner for treating with the Indians, writes: "I am waiting here very impatiently for arrivals from the Indian country. But nothing comes, as yet, except proof stronger and stronger of the injustice done to the Winnebagoes by the actual seizure of their country." To repress this spirit of the people of northern Illinois, much time and negotiation was required. By his knowledge of the Indian and frontier character, an arrangement was at length concluded for the occupation of the Rock River and Galena country.
23d. An official letter of the New York Lyceum of Natural History expresses their thanks for recent donations. Dr. Van Rensselaer says: "Your birds, reptiles, and quadrupeds have been most graciously received.... The expedition to the South Seas (heretofore noticed in this journal) will afford a field for some naturalist to labor in. Dr. Dekay intends to apply for the situation. We are at present engaged in drawing up some instructions for the naturalist (whoever he may be), which we shall hand to Mr. Southard, who is now here and has requested it. We trust the expedition will add something to our knowledge as well as to our pecuniary wealth."
27th. Fiscal--Something has been out of kelter at Washington these two years with regard to the rigid application of appropriations, at least in the Indian Department. We have been literally without money, and issuing paper to public creditors and employees. Surely a government that collects its own revenues should never want funds to pay its agents and officers.
Mr. Trowbridge writes: "The money pressure is nearly or quite over in New York, but we feel it here in a dreadful degree. The want of public disbursements this year, upon which we have always rested our hopes with so much confidence, added to the over-introduction of goods for a year or two past, has produced this state of things, and I sometimes think that there will be no great improvement in this generation."
29th. Medical Causes of Depopulation.--The causes of Indian depopulation are wars, the want of abundance of food, intemperance, and idleness. Dr. Pitcher, in a letter of this date, says: "In your note (to 'Sanillac') on the subject of the diminution in numbers of our aboriginal neighbors, you have seized upon the most conspicuous, and, during their continuance, the most fatal causes of their decline. With the small-pox you might, however, associate the measles, which, in consequence of their manner of treating the fever preceding the eruption, viz., the use of vapor and cold baths combined, most commonly tends to a mortal termination. To these two evils, propagated by the diffusion of a specific virus, may be added the prevalence of general epidemics, such as influenza, &c., whose virulence expends its force without restraint upon the Indians. They are not (as you are aware) a people who draw much instruction from the school of experience, particularly in the department of medicine, and, when by the side of this fact you place the protean forms which the diseases of epidemic seasons assume, the inference must follow that multitudes of them perish where the civilized man would escape (of which I could furnish examples).
"It is the province of the science of medicine to preserve to society its feeble and invalid members, which, notwithstanding the war it wages upon the principle of political economists, augments considerably the sum of human life. The victims of the diseases of civilization do not balance the casualties, &c. of a ruder state of society, as may be seen by inspecting the tables of the rates of mortality for a century past.
"I will suggest to you the propriety of improving this opportunity for setting the public right on one point, and that is the effects of aboriginal manners upon the physical character. For my part, I have long since ceased to believe that they are indebted to their mode of life for the vigor, as a race, which they exhibit, but that the naturally feeble are destroyed by the vicissitudes to which they are exposed, and which, in part, gives them an appearance, hardy and athletic, above their civilized neighbors."
Erroneous impressions of Indians.--Maj. Whiting, of Detroit, says (27th inst.): "I dare say I may find many things which will suit our purposes well. Something new and genuine is what we want, and the source gives assurance these things all bear that character. It is time the public should know that neither ladies nor gentlemen who have never crossed the lakes or the Alleghany, can have any but vague ideas of the children of the forest. An Indian might not succeed well in portraying life in New York, because he does not read much, and would have to trust pretty much, if not altogether, to imagination; but his task would differ only in degree from that of the literary pretender who has never traveled West beyond the march of fresh oysters (though by the way, these have been seen in Detroit), and yet thinks he can penetrate the shadows and darkness of the wilderness. They put a hatchet in his hand, and stick a feather in his cap, and call him 'Nitche Nawba.' If I recollect right, in Yamoyden a soup was made of some white children. Indians have not been over dainty at times, and no doubt have done worse things; but on such occasions their modus operandi was not likely to be so much in accordance with the precepts of Madam Glass."
Reviews.--"I read over your last article in the N.A., and thought it had rather less point and connection than you had probably given it; but it still has much to recommend it. The remarks on language were more intelligible to me than any I have before seen, and have given me many clues which I have vainly sought for in preceding dissertations of the kind."
Sept. 22d. This day the patriarch of the place, John Johnston, Esq., breathed his last. He had attained the age of sixty-six. A native of the county of Antrim, in the north of Ireland; a resident for some thirty-eight years of this frontier; a gentleman in manners; a merchant, in chief, in the hazardous fur trade; a man of high social feelings and refinements; a cotemporary of the long list of men eminent in that department; a man allied to bishops and nobles at home; connected in marriage with a celebrated Chippewa family of Algonquins; he was another Rolfe, in fact, in his position between the Anglo-Saxon and the Indian races; his life and death afford subjects for remark which are of the deepest interest, and would justify a biography, not a mere notice. I wrote a brief sketch for the New York Albion, and transmitted copies of the paper to some of his connections in Ireland.