"One hundred bushels of oats.
"The price of the above to be deducted from our land-payments."
Signed by ten chiefs, or, more properly, chief men, of the tribe, of whom one, the Beaver, signs his name in legible characters: the others, as is usual with the Indians, affix each their totem, (crest or sign-manual,) being a rude scratch of a bird, fish, deer, &c. Another of these papers, similarly signed, contains a requisition for working tools and mechanical instruments of various kinds. This looks well, and it is well; but what are the present state and probable progress of this Chippewa settlement? Why, one half the number at least are half-caste, and as the white population closes and thickens around them, we shall see in another generation or two none of entire Indian blood; they will become, at length, almost wholly amalgamated with the white people. Is this civilising the Indians?[17] I should observe, that when an Indian woman gives herself to a white man, she considers herself as his wife to all intents and purposes. If forsaken by him, she considers herself as injured, not disgraced. There are great numbers of white settlers and traders along the borders living thus with Indian women. Some of these have been persuaded by the missionaries or magistrates to go through the ceremony of marriage; but the number is few in proportion.
You must not imagine, after all I have said, that I consider the Indians as an inferior race, merely because they have no literature, no luxuries, no steam-engines; nor yet, because they regard our superiority in the arts with a sort of lofty indifference, which is neither contempt nor stupidity, look upon them as being beyond the pale of our sympathies. It is possible I may, on a nearer acquaintance, change my opinion, but they do strike me as an untamable race. I can no more conceive a city filled with industrious Mohawks and Chippewas, than I can imagine a flock of panthers browsing in a penfold.
The dirty, careless habits of the Indians, while sheltered only by the bark-covered wigwam, matter very little. Living almost constantly in the open air, and moving their dwellings perpetually from place to place, the worst effects of dirt and negligence are neither perceived nor experienced. But I have never heard of any attempt to make them stationary and congregate in houses, that has not been followed by disease and mortality, particularly among the children; a natural result of close air, confinement, heat, and filth. In our endeavours to civilise the Indians, we have not only to convince the mind and change the habits, but to overcome a certain physical organisation to which labour and constraint and confinement appear to be fatal. This cannot be done in less than three generations, if at all, in the unmixed race; and meantime—they perish!
LAKE ST. CLAIR.
It is time, however, that I should introduce you to our party on board the little steam-boat, which is now puffing, and snorting, and gliding at no rapid rate over the blue tranquil waters of Lake St. Clair.[18] First, then, there are the captain, and his mate or steersman, two young men of good manners and appearance; one English—the other Irish; one a military, the other a naval officer: both have land, and are near neighbours up somewhere by Lake Simcoe; but both being wearied out by three years' solitary life in the bush, they have taken the steam-boat for this season on speculation, and it seems likely to answer. The boat was built to navigate the ports of Lake Huron from Penetanguishine, to Goderich and St. Joseph's Island, but there it utterly failed. It is a wretched little boat, dirty and ill contrived. The upper deck, to which I have fled from the close hot cabin, is an open platform, with no defence or railing around it, and I have here my establishment—a chair, a little table, with pencil and paper, and a great umbrella; a gust of wind or a pitch of the vessel would inevitably send me sliding overboard. The passengers consist of my acquaintance, the Moravian missionary, with a family of women and children (his own wife and the relatives of his assistant Vogler), who are about to emigrate with the Indians beyond the Missouri. These people speak a dialect of German among themselves, being descended from the early German Moravians. I find them civil, but neither prepossessing nor intelligent; in short, I can make nothing of them; I cannot extract an idea beyond eating, drinking, dressing, and praying; nor can I make out with what feelings, whether of regret, or hope, or indifference, they contemplate their intended exile to the far, far west. Meantime the children squeal, and the women chatter incessantly.
We took in at Chatham a large cargo of the usual articles of exportation from Canada to the United States, viz. barrels of flour, sacks of grain, and emigrants proceeding to Michigan and the Illinois. There are on board, in the steerage, a great number of poor Scotch and Irish of the lowest grade, and also one large family of American emigrants, who have taken up their station on the deck, and whose operations amuse me exceedingly. I wish I could place before you this very original ménage, even as it is before me now while I write. Such a group could be encountered nowhere on earth, methinks, but here in the west, or among the migratory Tartar hordes of the east.
They are from Vermont, and on their way to the Illinois, having been already eleven weeks travelling through New York and Upper Canada. They have two waggons covered in with canvass, a yoke of oxen, and a pair of horses. The chief or patriarch of the set is an old Vermont farmer, upwards of sixty at least, whose thin shrewd face has been burnt to a deep brick-dust colour by the sun and travel, and wrinkled by age or care into a texture like that of tanned sail-canvass—(the simile nearest to me at this moment). The sinews of his neck and hands are like knotted whipcord; his turned-up nose, with large nostrils, snuffs the wind, and his small light blue eyes have a most keen, cunning expression. He wears a smockfrock over a flannel shirt, blue woollen stockings, and a broken pipe stuck in his straw hat, and all day long he smokes or chews tobacco. He has with him fifteen children of different ages by three wives. The present wife, a delicate, intelligent, care-worn woman, seems about thirty years younger than her helpmate. She sits on the shaft of one of the waggons I have mentioned, a baby in her lap, and two of the three younger children crawling about her feet. Her time and attention are completely taken up in dispensing to the whole brood, young and old, rations of food, consisting of lard, bread of Indian corn, and pieces of sassafras root. The appearance of all (except the poor anxious mother) is equally robust and cheerful, half-civilised, coarse, and by no means clean: all are barefooted except the two eldest girls, who are uncommonly handsome, with fine dark eyes. The eldest son, a very young man, has been recently married to a very young wife, and these two recline together all day, hand in hand, under the shade of a sail, neither noticing the rest nor conversing with each other, but, as it seems to me, in silent contentment with their lot. I found these people, most unlike others of their class I have met with before, neither curious nor communicative, answering to all my questions and advances with cautious monosyllables, and the old man with even laconic rudeness. The contrast which the gentle anxious wife and her baby presented to all the others, interested me; but she looked so overpowered by fatigue, and so disinclined to converse, that I found no opportunity to satisfy my curiosity without being impertinently intrusive; so, after one or two ineffectual advances to the shy, wild children, I withdrew, and contented myself with observing the group at a distance.