"When I arrived I had not sufficient corn to feed my men three days. There was also at that time a great scarcity of fish. But the God of Elijah did not forsake us. We soon were in the midst of plenty. On the 11th of the present instant my fisherman returned, having been absent not quite four weeks, and with but four nets, yet I had nearly 6000 tulibees (this is a small species of whitefish) on my scaffold. My house, in the meantime, was going forward, though rather tardily, with but one man. In two days more I hope to quit my bark lodge for my log and mud-walled cottage, though it has neither chair nor three-legged stool, table nor bedstead. But all this does not frighten me. No, it is good for a man sometimes to stand in need, that he may the better know how to feel for his fellow-man.
"You mention the receipt of a letter from Mr. Greene, relative to the field at Fond du Lac. I am happy to hear so full an expression of your views in relation to that post. As the Board were unable to supply a teacher, Mr. Hall, on visiting them in September, with myself and Mr. Ely--we were all of the same opinion, that it must be occupied--and finally, with the advice of Mr. Aitkin, concluded that it was best for Mr. Ely to pass the winter there. Mr. Cotè was also very desirous of a school being opened. Sandy Lake, of course, is without a teacher this winter. I was not a little disappointed, after the repeated assurances and encouragements of the Board to expect aid, and after the provision I had made for a fellow-laborer, to be directed to return and pass another winter as I did the past. Suffice it to say, I have learned more of Indian habits, customs, prejudices, &c., than I knew two years, or even one year before.
"To pass my time in the family of the trader, I could not avoid giving the impression that I was more interested in the trade than in their temporal and spiritual welfare. To live alone I could not, and live above their suspicion from the habits of single men who are engaged in the trade. To live in the family with my hired man, would be quite as bad. I, therefore, concluded that the time had now come when duty was too imperious not to receive a hearing. A sense of duty, duty to God, the cause of Christianity, myself and this people, therefore, led me to change my condition.
"I am giving you no news (I presume), only the reasons which satisfy myself, and that for an enlightened moral being is enough, at least it is all I need or wish to meet friend or foe.
"The Indians now are all at their wintering grounds, and on good terms with the Sioux, as I, this evening, learn from Mr. D., who has just returned from an excursion among them. They have appeared quite as friendly, and by far more civil, this fall than last."
Dec. 8th. Mr. Leonard Woods, and Dr. A.W. Ives, of New York, press me to write for the pages of the Theological Review, a periodical of great spirit and judgment in its department.
31st. The people of this territory have evinced, in various ways, great uneasiness in not being admitted, by a preparatory act of Congress, to the right of forming a state constitution, and admission into the Union, agreeably to the Ordinance of 1787. The population has, for some time, been more than sufficient to authorize one representative. In some respects, the term of territorial probation and privilege has been extraordinary, and bears a striking analogy to that of a plant, thrice plucked up by the roots, and watered, and nourished, and set out again. It has been twenty-nine years a territory, having been first organized, I believe, in 1805, For the first seven years it was under the government of Gen. Hull, by whom it was lost, and fell under foreign conquest. It then had about a year of military government under Gen. Brock, and, after being re-conquered in 1814, lived on, awhile, under the rule of our own commanding generals. Gen. Cass was, I think, appointed by Mr. Monroe, late in 1814, and governed it for the long period of eighteen years. Geo. B. Porter succeeded, and, since his death, there has been a confused interregnum of secretaries.
"Thrice plucked up" was it, by the total destruction of Detroit (which was in fact the territory) by fire in 1806, by the terrible Indian and British war in 1812, and by the Indian war of the Black Hawk of 1832. It has suffered in blood and toil more than any, or all the other north-western territories together. It has been the entering point for all hostilities from Canada; and, to symbolize its position, it has been the anvil on which all the grand weapons of our Indian scath have been hammered. Its old French and American families have been threshed by the flail of war, like grain on a floor. And it is no wonder that the people are tired of waiting for sovereignty, and think of taking the remedy into their own hands. On the 9th of September, the Legislative Council passed an act for taking the census. The result shows a population of 85,856, in the fourteen lower counties, and the first steps for a self-called convention are in progress.