The magazines and store-houses of the Fur Company were the resort of all the upper tribes for the sale of their commodities, and the purchase of all such articles as they had need of, including those above enumerated, and also ammunition, which, as well as money and liquor, their British friends very commendably omitted to furnish them.
Besides their furs, various in kind and often of great value—beaver, otter, marten, mink, silver-gray and red fox, wolf, bear, and wild cat, musk-rat, and smoked deer-skins—the Indians brought for trade maple-sugar in abundance, considerable quantities of both Indian corn and petit-blé,[B] beans and the folles avoines,[C] or wild-rice, while the squaws added to their quota of merchandize a contribution in the form of moccasins, hunting-pouches, mococks, or little boxes of birch-bark embroidered with porcupine quills and filled with maple-sugar, mats of a neat and durable fabric, and toy-models of Indian cradles, snow shoes, canoes, &c., &c.
[B] Corn which has been parboiled, shelled from the cob, and dried in the sun.
[C] Literally, crazy oats. It is the French name for the Menomonees.
It was no unusual thing, at this period, to see a hundred or more canoes of Indians at once approaching the island, laden with their articles of traffic; and if to these we add the squadrons of large Mackinac boats[[6]] constantly arriving from the outposts, with the furs, peltries, and buffalo-robes collected by the distant traders, some idea may be formed of the extensive operations and important position of the American Fur Company, as well as of the vast circle of human beings either immediately or remotely connected with it.
It is no wonder that the philanthropic mind, surveying these races of uncultivated heathen, should stretch forward to the time when, by an unwearied devotion of the white man’s energies, and an untiring sacrifice of self and fortune, his red brethren might rise in the scale of social civilization—when Education and Christianity should go hand in hand, to make “the wilderness blossom as the rose.”
Little did the noble souls at this day rejoicing in the success of their labors at Mackinac, anticipate that in less than a quarter of a century there would remain of all these numerous tribes but a few scattered bands, squalid, degraded, with scarce a vestige remaining of their former lofty character—their lands cajoled or wrested from them—the graves of their fathers turned up by the ploughshare—themselves chased farther and farther towards the setting sun, until they were literally grudged a resting place on the face of the earth!
Our visit to the Mission school was of short duration, for the “Henry Clay” was to leave at two o’clock, and in the meantime we were to see what we could of the village and its environs, and after that, dine with Mr. Mitchell, an old friend of my husband. As we walked leisurely along over the white gravelly road, many of the residences of the old inhabitants were pointed out to me. There was the dwelling of Madame Laframboise,[[7]] an Ottawa woman, whose husband had taught her to read and write, and who had ever after continued to use the knowledge she had acquired for the instruction and improvement of the youth among her own people. It was her custom to receive a class of young pupils daily at her house, that she might give them lessons in the branches mentioned, and also in the principles of the Roman Catholic religion, to which she was deeply devoted. She was a woman of a vast deal of energy and enterprise—of a tall and commanding figure, and most dignified deportment. After the death of her husband, who was killed while away at his trading-post by a Winnebago named White Ox, she was accustomed to visit herself the trading-posts, superintend the clerks and engagés, and satisfy herself that the business was carried on in a regular and profitable manner.
The Agency-house, with its unusual luxuries of piazza and gardens, was situated at the foot of the hill on which the fort was built. It was a lovely spot, notwithstanding the stunted and dwarfish appearance of all cultivated vegetation in this cold northern latitude.