27th. Visited Mr. Paulding (Secretary of the Navy) in the evening. Found him a father aged bald-headed man, of striking physiognomy, prominent intellectual developments, and easy dignified manners. It was pleasing to recognize one of the prominent authors of Salmagundi, which I had read in my schoolboy days, and never even hoped to see the author of this bit of fun in our incipient literature. For it is upon this, and the still higher effort of Irving's facetious History of New York, that we must base our imaginative literature. They first taught us that we had a right to laugh. We were going on, on so very stiff a model, that, without the Knickerbocker, we should not have found it out.
28th. I prepared a list of queries for the department, designed to elicit a more precise and reliable account of the Indian tribes than has yet appeared. It is astonishing how much gross error exists in the popular mind respecting their true character.
Talk of an Indian--why the very stare
Says, plain as language, Sir, have you been there?
Do tell me, has a Potawattomie a soul,
And have the tribes a language? Now that's droll--
They tell me some have tails like wolves, and others claws,
Those Winnebagoes, and Piankashaws.
30th. Mr. Paulding transmits a note of thanks for some Indian words. The euphony of the aboriginal vocabulary impresses most persons. In most of their languages this appears to result, in part, from the fact that a vowel and a consonant go in pairs--i.e. a vowel either precedes or follows a consonant, and it is comparatively rare that two consonants are required to be uttered together. There is but one language that has the th, so common in English. Sh and gh are, however, frequently sounded in the Chippewa. The most musical words are found in the great Muscogee and Algonquin families, and it is in these that the regular succession of vowels and consonants is found.
31st. The year 1838 has been a marked one in our Indian relations. The southern Indians have experienced an extensive breaking up, in their social institutions, and been thrown, by the process of emigration, west of the Mississippi, and the policy of the government on this head, which was first shadowed out in 1825, and finally sanctioned by the act of land exchanges, 1830, may be deemed as having been practically settled. The Cherokees, who required the movements of an army to induce them to carry out the principles of the treaty of New Echota, have made their first geographical movement since the discovery of the continent, a period of 331 years. How much longer they had dwelt in the country abandoned we know not. They clung to it with almost a death grasp. It is a lovely region, and replete with a thousand advantages and a thousand reminiscences. Nothing but the drum of the Anglo-Saxon race could have given them an effectual warning to go. Gen. Scott, in his well advised admonitory proclamation, well said, that the voice under which both he and they acted is imperative, and that by heeding it, it is hoped that "they will spare him the horror of witnessing the destruction of the Cherokees." The great Muskogee family had been broken up, by the act of Georgia, before. The Seminoles, who belong to that family, broke out themselves in a foolish hostility very late in 1835, and have kept up a perfectly senseless warfare, in the shelter of hummocks and quagmires since. The Choctaws and Chickasaws, with a wise forecast, had forseen their position, and the utter impossibility of setting up independent governments in the boundaries of the States. It is now evident to all, that the salvation of these interesting relics of Oriental races lies in colonization west. Their teachers, the last to see the truth, have fully assented to it. Public sentiment has settled on that ground; sound policy dictates it; and the most enlarged philanthropy for the Indian race perceives its best hopes in the measure.
CHAPTER LXVI.
Sentiments of loyalty--Northern Antiquarian Society--Indian statistics--Rhode Island Historical Society--Gen. Macomb--Lines in the Odjibwa language by a mother on placing her children at school--Mehemet Ali--Mrs. Jameson's opinion on publishers and publishing--Her opinion of my Indian legends--False report of a new Indian language--Indian compound words--Delafield's Antiquities--American Fur Company--State of Indian disturbances in Texas and Florida--Causes of the failure of the war in Florida, by an officer--Death of an Indian chief--Mr. Bancroft's opinion on the Dighton Rock inscription--Skroellings not in New England--Mr. Gallatin's opinion on points of Esquimaux language, connected with our knowledge of our archaeology.
1839. Jan. 1st. I called, amid the throng, on the President. His manners were bland and conciliatory. These visits, on set days, are not without the sentiment of strong personality in many of the visitors, but what gives them their most significant character is the general loyalty they evince to the constitution, and government, and supreme law of the land. The President is regarded, for the time, as the embodiment of this sentiment, and the tacit fealty paid to him, as the supreme law officer, is far more elevating to the self-balanced and independent mind than if he were a monarch ad libitum, and not for four years merely.
2d. I received a notice of my election as a member of the Royal Northern Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, of which fact I had been previously notified by that Society. This Society shows us how the art of engraving may be brought in as an auxiliary to antiquarian letters; but it certainly undervalues American sagacity if it conjectures that such researches and speculations as those of Mr. Magnusen, on the Dighton Rock, and what it is fashionable now-a-days to call the NEWPORT RUIN, can satisfy the purposes of a sound investigation of the Anti-Columbian period of American history.