Alexander Macomb, Jr., born April 3, 1782, Detroit, N. Y.; Cornet Cavalry, January 10, 1799; Second Lieutenant, February, 1801; retained, April, 1802, in Second Infantry; First Lieutenant of Engineers, October, 1802; Captain, June, 1805; Major of Engineers, February 23, 1808; Lieutenant-Colonel, July 23, 1810; Acting Adjutant-General of the Army, April 28, 1812; Colonel Third Artillery, July 6, 1812; Brigadier-General, January 24, 1814; Brevet Major-General, "for distinguished and gallant conduct in defeating the enemy at Plattsburg, September 11, 1814" (October 1, 1814); received the "thanks of Congress" of November 3, 1814, "for his gallantry and good conduct in defeating the enemy at Plattsburg, on the 11th of September, repelling with 1,500 men, aided by a body of militia and volunteers from New York and Vermont, a British veteran army, greatly superior in numbers," with the presentation of a gold medal, "emblematical of this triumph;" retained, April 8, 1815; retained, May 21, as Colonel and Principal Engineer, with Brevets Major-General and General-in-Chief of the Army, May 24, 1828; commanded the army of Florida 1836; died June 25, 1841, at his head-quarters, Washington City.—Gardner's Army Dictionary.
[33] John Sullivan Pierce (N. H., brother to Colonel Benjamin K. Pierce), Third Lieutenant Third Artillery, April 5, and Second Lieutenant, May, 1814; retained, May, 1815, in Artillery; First Lieutenant, April 1818; resigned February 1, 1823.—Gardner's Army Dictionary.
[34] This fort was first erected by the British in 1795, the year before Michilimackinac was evacuated under Wayne's treaty with the Indians.
[35] From Nebee, water; hence Nebeesh, rapid water, or strong water, the name of the rapids which connect the straits with the River St. Mary's. This word is the derogative form of the Chippewa noun.
[36] From the French bon jour.
[37] The present site of Fort Brady.
[38] Inter-European Amalgamation.—John Johnston was a native of the north of Ireland, where his family possessed an estate called "Craige," near the celebrated Giant's Causeway. He came to this country during the first Presidential term of Washington, and settled at St. Mary's, about 1793. He was a gentleman of taste, reading, refined feeling, and cultivated manners, which enabled him to direct the education of his children, an object to which he assiduously devoted himself; and his residence was long known as the seat of hospitality and refinement to all who visited the region. In 1814, his premises were visited, during his absence, by a part of the force who entered the St. Mary's, under Colonel Croghan, and his private property subjected to pillage, from a misapprehension, created by some evil-minded persons, that he was an agent of the Northwest Company. Genial, social, kind, and benevolent, his society was much sought, and he was sometimes imposed on by those who had been received into his employments and trusts (as in the reports which carried the Americans to his domicil in 1814). He died at St. Mary's, in 1828, leaving behind, among his papers, evidence that his leisure hours were sometimes lightened by literary employments. Mr. Johnston, by marrying the daughter of the ruling chief of this region, placed himself in the position of another Rolfe. Espousing, in Christian marriage, the daughter of Wabjeeg, he became the son-in-law of another Powhatan; thus establishing such a connection between the Hibernian and Chippewa races, as the former had done between the English and Powhetanic stocks.
[39] James Riley, a son of the late J. V. S. Riley, Esq., of Schenectady, N. Y., by a Saganaw woman; a man well versed in the language, customs, and local traditions of the Chippewas.
[40] St. Mary's Canal.—Thirty-three years have produced an astonishing progress. A ship-canal is now (1853) in the process of being constructed at these falls, by the State of Michigan, under a grant of public land for that purpose, from Congress. It is to consist of two locks of equal lift, dividing the aggregate fall. This canal will add the basin of Lake Superior to the line of lake navigation. It will enable ships and steamers to enter the St. Louis River of Fond du Lac, and to reach a point in latitude corresponding to Independence, on the Missouri. No other point of the lake chain reaches so far by some hundreds of miles towards the Rocky Mountains; and this canal will eventually be the outlet to the Atlantic cities of the copper and other mines of Lake Superior, and of the agricultural and mineral products of all the higher States of the Upper Mississippi and of the Missouri, and a part of Oregon and Washington on the Pacific.
[41] From na, excellent; amik, beaver; and ong, a place.