16th. Office of Indian Affairs, Michilimackinack. On returning from Grand River, I observed a continuation of the misrepresentations begun last winter, respecting the Indian policy and proceedings of the Department. A ground for these misconceptions, and in some things, perversions, arose from the goods' offer for the half annuity, made in 1837. This offer being rejected by the Michigan Indians, was renewed to those of Wisconsin, and accepted by the Menomonies of Green Bay. Traders and merchants who were expecting the usual payments of cash annuities to the Indians, were sorely disappointed by finding a single tribe in the lake country paid in merchandise. The policy itself was a bad one, and denoted the inexperience and consequent unfitness of Mr. Carey A. Harris for the post of Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington. I anticipated the storm it would raise on the frontiers, and, when the project was transmitted to me, did not attempt to influence my Indians (the Michigan Indians) to accept or reject it, but left it entirely to their own judgments, after appointing two honest men to show the goods and state the prices. A less impartial course appears to have been pursued at Green Bay, where this policy of the "goods offer" of 1837 was loudly called in question. I had shielded the tribes under my care from it, and should have had credit for it from all honest and candid men, but finding no disposition in some quarters to discriminate, I immediately, on reaching home, sat down and wrote a plain and clear statement of the affair for the public press, and having thus satisfied my sense of justice and truth, left others, who had acted wholly out of my jurisdiction and influence, to vindicate themselves. J.W. Edmonds, Esq., and Maj. John Garland, who had been chief actors in the matter, did so. But it seemed like talking against a whirlwind. The whole action of this offer, on the Michigan Indians, was to postpone, by their own consent, the payment of the half annuity in coin one year.
The Grand River Indians declined to come to Mackinack, the place specially named in the treaty, to receive their half annuity, in consequence of which, it was not practicable to send it to them till the next spring. I paid it myself on the 5th of June, 1848, in silver. Yet the rumor of gross injustice to the Indians only gained force as it spread. The Grand River memorialists made "nuts" of it, and General Jim Wilson wielded it for my benefit, in his classical stump speeches in New Hampshire. I had carefully shielded my Indians from a cent's loss, yet my name was pitched into the general condemnation, like the thirteenth biscuit in a baker's dozen. Nothing rolls up so fast as a lie, when once afloat.[86]
[86] Harris felt disobliged by my independence of action respecting the "goods offer." He had, in fact, been overreached by a noted commercial house, who dealt heavily in Indian goods in New York, who sold him the goods on credit; but who actually collected the specie from the western land offices, on public drafts, before the year expired. He vented this pique officially, by suspending my report of Oct. 18th, 1837, on the debt claims against the Indians, finally assumed powers in relation to them, directly subversive of the principles of the treaty of March 28th, 1836, which had been negotiated by me, and referred them for revision to a more supple agent of his wishes at New York, who had been one of the efficient actors in the "goods offer" at Green Bay, Wisconsin, as above detailed.
CHAPTER LXIII.
Missions--Hard times, consequent on over-speculation--Question of the rise of the lakes--Scientific theory--Trip to Washington--Trip to Lake Superior and the Straits of St. Mary--John Tanner--Indian improvements north of Michilimackinack--Great cave--Isle Nabiquon--Superstitious ideas of the Indians connected with females--Scotch royals--McKenzie--Climate of the United States--Foreign coins and natural history--Antique fort in Adams County, Ohio--Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries--Statistics of lands purchased from the Indians--Sun's eclipse--Government payments.
1838. June 18th. W. Lowrie, Esq., Missionary Rooms, N.Y., announces the sending of an agent to explore the missionary field, which it is proposed to occupy by the Presbyterian Board, in the region of Lake Michigan, bespeaking my friendly offices to the agent.
The plethora of success which has animated every department of life and business, puffing them up like gas in a balloon, since about '35 has departed and left the fiscal system perfectly flaccid and lifeless. The rage for speculation in real estate has absorbed all loose cash, and the country is now groaning for its fast-locked circulating medium. A friend at Detroit writes: "With fifty thousand dollars of productive real estate in the city, and as much more in stocks and mortgages, I am absolutely in want of small sums to pay my current expenses, and to rid myself of the mortification produced by this feeling I am prepared to make almost any sacrifice."
27th. Received a communication from the chief engineer of the New York canal (Alfred Barrett, Esq.) on the subject of the rise of water in the lakes. "A question of considerable importance," he says, "has arisen in our State Legislature, in relation to the rise of water in Lake Erie. The lake has been gradually increasing in its height for the last ten years, and has gained an elevation of four feet above that of 1826. The inhabitants along the shores of the lake as far as Detroit, upon both sides, and many throughout our State, have been led to attribute this increase to the erection of the State and the United States pier at the outlet of the lake, opposite Black Rock, which presents an obstruction to the action of the river. But this evidently is not the only cause of the rise of the lake, for, by observation, we find the Niagara River below the dam, and the surface of Lake Ontario, to have increased in the same ratio in the same time. Lake Ontario is four feet higher than it was in 1826.
"Our Legislature has called for information on the subject. And for many important facts we shall be indebted to the goodness of persons residing or acquainted at the places where they may exist. The canal commissioners of the State have desired me to communicate with you, desiring such data as you may have in your possession relevant to the subject. And we are induced to trouble you for information respecting the condition of the water in Lake Superior and other western waters, believing that your extensive acquaintance and close observation in that region have put you in possession of facts which will enable you to determine, with a degree of accuracy, the fluctuations of these waters, and their present increased or diminished height, as well as to trace some of the causes which have an influence in producing the results that are experienced in the rise and fall of the lakes."