26th. Mrs. Morris brings a letter from Hon. A.E. Wing, of Monroe. She contemplates spending the summer on the island on account of impaired health. The pure air and fine summer climate of Mackinack begin to be appreciated within a year or two by valetudinarians. It is a perfect Montpelier to them. The inhaling of its pure and dry atmosphere in midsummer is found to act very favorably on the digestive organs. No process of health-making gymnastics is prescribed by physicians. They merely direct persons to walk about and enjoy the sights and scenes about them, to saunter along its winding paths, or go fishing or gunning. Its woods are delightful, and its cliffs command the sublimest views. One would think that if the muses are ever routed from the bare hills of Olympus and the springs of Helicon, they would take shelter in the glens of Michilimackinack, where the Indian pukwees, or fairies, danced of old. I received intelligence of the death of Ogimau Keegido (Speaker Chief), the head sachem of the Saginaws. He had indulged some time in drinking, and, after getting out of this debauch, was confined by sickness three days. Death came to his relief. Some years ago this man met with an accident by the discharge of a gun, by which his liver protruded; he took his knife and cut off a small piece, which he ate as a panacea. He was a man of strong passions and ungoverned will. He visited Washington in 1836, and, with other chiefs, sold the Saginaw reservations.
The party of Saginaws who brought me the above information had among them twenty-two orphan children, whose parents had died of small-pox. They were on their way to the Manitoulines.
28th. Mud-je-ke-wis, a minor chief of Grand Traverse Bay, surrenders a belt of blue and white wampum, and a gilt gorget, which he had received from some officer of the British Indian Department in Canada, saying he renounces allegiance to that government, and reports himself, from this day, as an American.
29th. Chingossamo (Big Sail), of Cheboigan, having migrated to the Manitouline Islands with thirteen families, about seventy-nine souls, an election was this day held, at this office, by the Indians, to supply the place of ruling chief. Sticks, of two colors, were prepared as ballots for the two candidates. Of these, Keeshowa received two-thirds, and was declared duly elected. I granted a certificate of this election. The present population is reduced to forty-four souls, who live in thirteen families. This band are Chippewas.
Gen. Scott arrives at this post, on a general tour of inspection of the northern posts, and proceeds the same day to Sault St. Marie, accompanied by Maj. Whiting.
July 2d. The Wisconsin Democrat, of this date, contains an interesting sketch of the history of the Brotherton Indians, which is represented to be "composed of the descendants of the six following named tribes of Indians, viz., the Naragansetts, of Rhode Island; the Stoningtons, or Pequoits, of Groton, Connecticut; the Montauks, of Long Island; the Mohegans, Nianticks, and Farmington Indians, also of Connecticut. Several years before the American Revolution, a single Indian of the Montauk tribe left his nation and traveled into the State of New York. He had no fixed purpose in view more than (as he expressed it) to see the world. During his absence, however, he fortunately paid a visit to the Oneidas, then a very large and powerful tribe of Indians residing in the State of New York. With them he concluded to rest a short time. They, discovering that he possessed 'some of the white man's learning,' employed him to teach a common reading and writing school among them. He remained with them longer than he at first intended. During this time the Oneida chief made many inquiries respecting his (the Montauk) tribe, and the other tribes before mentioned, and received, for answer, 'that they had almost become extinct--that their game was fast disappearing--that their landed possessions were very small--that the pure blood of their ancestors had become mixed with both the blood of the white man and the African---that new and fatal diseases had appeared among them--that the curse of all curses, the white man's stream of liquid fire, was inundating their very existence, and the gloomy prospect of inevitable annihilation seemed to stare them in the face--that no 'hope with a goodly prospect fed the eye.' The Oneida chief, actuated partly with a desire to extend the hand of brotherly affection to rescue the above tribes from the melancholy fate that seemed to await them, and partly with a desire to manifest his deep sense of the valuable services rendered to him and his nation in his having taught among them a school, gave to the schoolteacher a tract of land twelve miles square for the use and benefit of his tribe, and the other tribes mentioned."
The treaty of the 14th of January, 1837, with the Saginaws, is confirmed by the Senate.
3d. The Arkansas Little Rock Gazette, of this date, states that the long existing feud in the Cherokee nation, which has divided its old and new settlers, has terminated in a series of frightful murders. Its language is this:--
"We briefly alluded in our last to a report from the west that John Ridge, one of the principal chiefs of the Cherokee nation, had been assassinated. More recent accounts confirm the fact, and bring news of the murder of Ridge's father, together with Elias Boudinot and some ten or twelve men of less distinction (some accounts say thirty or forty), all belonging to Ridge's party.
"These murders are acknowledged to have been committed by the partisans of John Boss, between whom and Ridge a difference has for a long time subsisted, growing out of the removal of the Cherokees from the old nation to the west, Ridge having uniformly been favorable to that course and Ross opposing it."