30 Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
May 22d.--General Cass had, before leaving Detroit, offered me the situation of Secretary to the Commissioners appointed to confer with the Indians at Chicago in the summer of 1821, with a view, primarily, to the interesting and circuitous journey which it was his intention to make, in order to reach the place of meeting. This offer, as the time drew on, he now put in the shape of a letter, which I determined at once to accept, and made my arrangements to leave the city without loss of time.
It was proposed to be at Detroit the 1st of July. The tour would lie through the valleys of the Miami of the lakes, and the Wabash, which interlock at the Fort Wayne summit; then across the Grand Prairie of the Illinois to St. Louis, and up the Illinois River from its mouth to its source. This would give me a personal knowledge of three great valleys, which I had not before explored, and connect my former southern explorations in Arkansas and Missouri with those of the great lake basins and the upper Mississippi. I had been at the sources and the mouth of that great river, and I had now the opportunity to complete the knowledge of its central portions. It was with the utmost avidity, therefore, that I turned my face again towards the West.
Mr. Calhoun, who was written to on the subject, concurred in this plan, and extended the time for the completion of my geological report.
Joint Work on the Scientific Results of the Expedition of 1820.-- General Cass, who had been written to, thus expresses himself on this subject:--
"Captain Douglass has informed me that you and he meditate a joint work, which shall comprise those objects, literary and scientific, which could not properly find a place in a diurnal narrative. At what time is this work to appear, and what are its plan and objects? My observations and inquiries respecting the Indians will lead me much further than I intended or expected. If I can prepare anything upon that subject prior to the appearance of the work, I shall be happy to do it."
Geological Survey of Dutchess County.--Dr. Benjamin Allen, of Hyde Park, writes to me (June 4th) on this subject, urging me to undertake the survey; but the necessity of closing my engagements in the West rendered it impossible.
Expedition of 1820.--Dr. Mitchell furnishes me opinions upon some of the scientific objects collected by me and my associates in the north-west in 1820:--
"The Squirrel sent by General Cass is a species not heretofore described, and has been named by Dr. Mitchell the federation squirrel, or sciurus tredecem striatus.
"The Pouched Rat, or mus bursarius, has been seen but once in Europe. This was a specimen sent to the British Museum from Canada, and described by Dr. Shaw. But its existence is rather questioned by Charles Cuvier.
"Both animals have been described and the descriptions published in the 21st Vol. of the Medical Repository of New York, p. 248 et seq. The specimens are both preserved in my museum. Drawings have been executed by the distinguished artist Milbert, and forwarded by him at my request to the administrators of the King's Museum, at Paris, of which he is a corresponding member. My descriptions accompany them. The originals are retained as too valuable to be sent out of the country.
"The Paddle Fish is the spatularia of Shaw and polyodon of Lacepede. It lives in the Mississippi only, and the skeleton, though incomplete, is better than any other person here possesses. It is carefully preserved in my collection.
"The Serpent is a species of the Linnaean genus Anguis, the orveto of the French, and the blind worm of the English. The loss of the tail of this fragile creature may render an opinion a little dubious, but it is supposed to be an ophias aureus of Dandin, corresponding to the Anguis ventralis of Linn, figured by Catesby.
"The shells afford a rich amount of undescribed species. The whole of the univalves and bivalves received from Messrs. Schoolcraft and Douglass, have been assembled, and examined with all I possessed before, and with Mr. Stacy Collins's molluscas brought from Ohio. Mr. Barnes is charged with describing and delineating all the species not contained in Mr. Say's memoir on these productions of the land and fresh waters of North America. The finished work will be laid before the Lyceum, and finally be printed in Silliman's New Haven Journal. The species with which zoology will be enriched will amount probably to nine or ten. We shall endeavor to be just to our friends and benefactors.
"The pipe adorns my mantelpiece, and is much admired by connoisseurs."
10. A New York Statesman, Jan. 1821.
CHAPTER VII.
Trip through the Miami of the lakes, and the Wabash Valley--Cross the grand prairie of Illinois--Revisit the mines--Ascend the Illinois--Fever--Return through the great lakes--Notice of the "Trio"--Letter from Professor Silliman--Prospect of an appointment under government--Loss of the "Walk-in-the-Water"--Geology of Detroit--Murder of Dr. Madison by a Winnebago Indian.
1821. I left New York for Chicago on the 16th June--hurried rapidly through the western part of that State--passed up Lake Erie from Buffalo, and reached Detroit just in season to embark, on the 4th of July. General Cass was ready to proceed, with his canoe-elege in the water. We passed, the same day, down the Detroit River, and through the head of Lake Erie into the Maumee Bay to Port Lawrence, the present site, I believe, of the city of Toledo. This was a distance of seventy miles, a prodigious day's journey for a canoe. But we were shot along by a strong wind, which was fair when we started, but had insensibly increased to a gale in Lake Erie, when we found it impossible to turn to land without the danger of filling. The wind, though a gale, was still directly aft. On one occasion I thought we should have gone to the bottom, the waves breaking in a long series, above our heads, and rolling down our breasts into the canoe. I looked quietly at General Cass, who sat close on my right, but saw no alarm in his countenance. "That was a fatherly one," was his calm expression, and whatever was thought, little was said. We weathered and entered the bay silently, but with feelings such as a man may be supposed to have when there is but a step between him and death.
We ascended the Miami Valley, through scenes renowned by the events of two or three wars. I walked over the scene of Dudley's defeat in 1812; of Wayne's victory in 1793; and of the sites of forts Deposit and Defiance, and other events celebrated in history. From Fort Defiance, which is at the junction of the River Auglaize, we rode to Fort Wayne, sleeping in a deserted hut half way. We passed the summit to the source of the Wabash, horseback, sleeping at an Indian house, where all the men were drunk, and kept up a howling that would have done credit to a pack of hungry wolves. The Canadians, who managed our canoe, in the mean time brought it from water to water on their shoulders, and we again embarked, leaving our horses at the forks of the Wabash. The whole of this long and splendid valley, then wild and in the state of nature, till below the Tippecanoe, we traversed, day by day, stopping at Vincennes, Terrehaute, and a hundred other points, and entered the Ohio and landed safely at Shawneetown. Here it was determined to send the Canadians with our canoe, round by water to St. Louis, while we hired a sort of stage-wagon to cross the prairies. I visited the noted locality of fluor spar in Pope County, Illinois, and crossing the mountainous tract called the Knobs, rejoined the party at the Saline. Here I found my old friend Enmenger, of Kemp and Keen memory, to be the innkeeper. On reaching St. Louis, General Cass rode over the country to see the Missouri, while I, in a sulky, revisited the mines in Washington, and brought back a supply of its rich minerals. We proceeded in our canoe up the River Illinois to the rapids, at what is called Fort Rock, or Starved Rock, and from thence, finding the water low, rode on horseback to Chicago, horses having been sent, for this purpose, from Chicago to meet us. There was not a house from Peoria to John Craft's, four miles from Chicago. I searched for, and found, the fossil tree, reported to lie in the rocks in the bed of the river Des Plaines. The sight of Lake Michigan, on nearing Chicago, was like the ocean. We found an immense number of Indians assembled. The Potawattomies, in their gay dresses and on horseback, gave the scene an air of Eastern magnificence. Here we were joined by Judge Solomon Sibley, the other commissioner from Detroit, whence