8th. The Canadian, or patriot war, is now at its height. The city has been kept in a perfect turmoil by it for weeks. The setting fire to outbuildings or deserted houses almost every dark night, appears to be connected with it. One dark night I stumbled and fell on an uneven pavement on a part of Jefferson Avenue, and immediately a voice cried "Hurrah for Canada!" There was an intense excitement among the lower classes in its favor, which it required a high degree of moral energy in the lovers of law and order to keep down.
This morning a conservative force of 250 volunteer militia embarked, at two P.M., in a steamer for Amherstburg (the Malden of the war of 1812), to demand the surrendry of the State arms recently taken from their place of deposit--the city jail. This demand is to be made of the patriot refugee force from Canada, who are about to take post on the island of Boisblanc, at the mouth of the Detroit River. It was a well-armed force, with muskets and cartridge-boxes well filled; but it was found that, on the way down the river, their cartridge-boxes had been relieved, by persons friendly to the patriots on board, of every particle of ammunition. The detachment returned about eleven o'clock at night, having proved wholly unsuccessful in the object of the movement.
Mr. Ball, a representative in the local legislature from Kent County, called this day to inquire into the propriety of establishing a sub-agency at Grand Rapids, on Grand River, for the ostensible benefit of the Ottawas in that quarter. The question of the division of funds between schools established for a part of the same people at Gull Prairie, under the care of Mr. Slater, and the separate school at Sault Ste. Marie, in Chippewa County, in the care of Mr. Bingham, both of which are under the general direction of the Baptist Missionary Board at Boston, was considered and approved, and letters written accordingly.
These efforts, at detached points, to improve the race must, we are inclined to believe, eventually fail. Two races so diverse in mind and habits cannot prosper together permanently; but the hope is that temporary good may be done. An Indian who is converted and dies in the faith, is essentially "a brand plucked out of the fire," and no man can undertake to estimate the moral value of the act. A child who is taught to read and write is armed with two requisites for entering civilized life. But the want of general efficient efforts, unobstructed by local laws and deleterious influences, cannot but, in a few years, convince the Boards that the colonization of the tribes West is the best, if not the only hope of prosperity to the race as a race.
9th. Lieut. E. S. Sibley, U.S.A., sets out to pay the Grand River Indians. I commissioned Charles H. Oakes, Esq., to witness the pay rolls. Mr. Conner returns the same day from attending the payments of the Swan Creek and Black River bands. He reports the Indians on the American side of the lines not disposed to engage in the present unhappy contest in the Canadas. Exertions, he affirms, have been made by the British authorities to induce the Chippewas living in Canada, opposite to the mouth of Black River, to engage in the conflict against their revolted people, but without success. They threatened, if matters were pushed, to flee to the American side. He states, also, that a council to the same effect had been held with the Canada Indians opposite Peach Island, at the foot of Lake St. Glair, which resulted in the same declaration.
12th. The appraisement rolls transmitted to Washington by Messrs. Macdonnel & Clarke, the appraisers appointed under the 8th article of the treaty of 28th March, 1836, were judged to be too high; and the subject was referred for revision to Maj. Garland and myself. I this day transmitted a joint reply of the major and myself, stating how impossible it would be to revise so complex a subject without opportunities of personal examination in each case--a business which neither of us desires.
16th. Received the first winter express from Mackinack, transmitting reports from the various persons in official employ there. They report a great storm at that place on the 8th and 9th of December, 1837, in the course of which the light-house on Boisblanc was blown down, and other damage done by the rise of water.
18th. Received the Senate's printed document, No. 1, containing the President's annual message and all the Secretaries' reports. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs recommends the abolition of sub-agencies, and the raising of the pay of interpreters--two measures recommended in my annual report. The department is very much in the hands of ignorant and immoral interpreters, who frequently misconceive the point to be interpreted. Could we raise up a set of educated and moral men for this duty, the department would stand on high grounds. Surely, a sort of normal institute could teach the principles of the Indian grammar, as well as the Greek. There is no sound without a meaning, and no meaning conveyed without an orthographical rule. They do not gabble at random, as some think. Their modes of utterance are, it is true, often defective, but they are not without grammatical laws, I inquired into this matter at my first entrance into the Indian country of the Algonquins, sixteen years ago. I found that verbs had eight classes of conjugations, and ten including the broad vowels; five declensions of nouns, and two sets of pronouns, one to be placed before and the other at the end of the verb and substantive. That all substantives could be changed into verbs; that there were a stock of adjective and prepositional participles, and that the mode of forming compounds and derivatives was varied, but all subject to the most exact rules. They have a very accurate appreciation of sound and its varied meanings, and are pushed to use figures to help out or illustrate a meaning; but the excessive refinements of syntax, for which some contend, are theories in the minds of unpracticed collaborators.
18th. I wrote to Mr. Palfrey, E.N.A.R., declining to review Stone's "Brant," and apprizing him of the preparation of an article on the "North-west," by Mr. I. Lanman. "I take this occasion to say that I have received the proof-sheets of some hundred and fifty pages of Col. Stone's Life of Brant. It is a work somewhat discursive, and involves some critical points in Indian history and customs. I should not feel willing to commence a notice of it, without having the whole before me. The hero of the work hardly exerts influence enough on the revolutionary contest to justify the attempt of piling on him so much of the materials of that momentous contest, and I think, moreover, there is a perceptible attempt made to whitewash a man who lived and died with no slight nor undeserved opprobrium."
19th. Hendrick Apaumut, a Mohegan chief, of Wisconsin, applied for aid, in money, to facilitate his journey to Washington. What the Indians lack, in their business affairs, is system and method; foresight to plan, and stability to carry into effect.