Colonel Brady is about to leave the post for the season, some conversation has been had about authorizing him to get a clergyman to come to the post. It is thought that if such a person would devote a part of his time as an instructor, a voluntary subscription could be got among the citizens to supply the sum requisite for his support. I drew up a paper with this view this morning, and after handing it round, found the sum of ninety-seven dollars subscribed--seventy-five dollars of which are by four persons. This is not half the stipend of "forty pounds a year" that poor Goldsmith's brother thought himself rich upon; and it is apprehended the colonel will hardly find the inducement sufficient to elicit attention to so very remote a quarter.
Nov. 1st. We have snow, cold, and chilly winds. On looking to the north, there are huge piles of clouds hanging over Lake Superior. We may say, with Burns,
"The wintry wind is gathering fast."
This is a holiday with the Canadian French--"All Saints." They appear as lively and thoughtless as if all the saints in the calendar were to join them in a dance. Well may it be said of them, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."
20th. Seclusion from the World realized.--We are now shut out from the world. The season of navigation has closed, the last vessel has departed. Philosophers may write, and poets may sing of the charms of solitude, but when the experiment comes to be tried, on a practical scale, such as we are now, one and all, about to realize, theories and fancies sink wonderfully in the scale. For some weeks past, everything with the power of motion or locomotion has been exerting itself to quit the place and the region, and hie to more kindly latitudes for the winter. Nature has also become imperceptibly sour tempered, and shows her teeth in ice and snows. Man-kind and bird-kind have concurred in the effort to go. We have witnessed the long-drawn flight of swans, brant, and cranes, towards the south. Singing birds have long since gone. Ducks, all but a very few, have also silently disappeared, and have probably gone to pick up spicy roots in the Susquehannah or Altamaha.
Prescient in the changes of the season, they have been the first to go. Men, who can endure greater changes and vicissitudes than all the animal creation put together, have lingered longer; but at last one after another has left Pa-wa-teeg, till all who can go have gone. Col. Brady did not leave his command till after the snow fell, and he saw them tolerably "cantoned." The last vessel for the season has departed--the last mail has been sent. Our population has been thinned off by the departure of every temporary dweller, and lingering trader, and belated visitor, till no one is left but the doomed and fated number whose duty is here, who came here to abide the winter in all its regions, and who cannot, on any fair principle or excuse, get away. They, and they alone, are left to winter here. Of this number I am a resigned and willing unit, and I have endeavored to prepare for the intellectual exigencies of it, by a systematic study and analysis of the Indian language, customs, and history, and character. My teachers and appliances are the best. I have furnished myself with vocabularies and hand-books, collected and written down, during the season. I have the post library in my room, in addition to my own, with a free access to that of "mine host" of the Emerald Isle, Mr. Johnston, to while away the time. My huge Montreal stove will take long billets of wood, which, to use the phraseology of Burns, "would mend a mill." The society of the officers and their families of the garrison is at hand. The amusements of a winter, in this latitude, are said to be rather novel, with their dog trains and creole sleighs. There are some noble fellows of the old "North West" order in the vicinity. There are thus the elements, at least, of study, society, and amusement. Whatever else betide, I have good health, and good spirits, and bright hopes, and I feel very much in the humor of enjoying the wildest kind of tempests which Providence may send to howl around my dwelling.
We have, as the means of exchanging sentiment, one English family of refinement and education, on the American side of the river, and two others, an English family and the Hudson Bay House in charge of a Scotch gentleman, on the Canada shore. We have the officers attached to a battalion of infantry, most of them married and having their ladies and families with them, and about a dozen American citizens besides, engaged in traffic and other affairs. These, with the resident metif population of above 300 souls, and the adjacent Indian tribes, constitute the world--the little isolated world--in which we must move for six months to come. About fifty miles off, S.E., is the British post of Drummond Island, and about forty west of the latter, the ancient position and island settlement of Michilimackinack, that bugbear to children in all our earlier editions of Webster's Spelling Book.
All the rest of the United States is a far-off land to us. For one, I draw around my fire, get my table and chair properly located, and resort to my books, and my Indian ia-ne-kun-o-tau-gaid let the storm whistle as it may.
25th. Zimmerman may write as much as he pleases about solitude. It is all very well in one's study, by his stove, if it is winter, with a good feather bed, and all comforts at hand; but he who would test his theories should come here. It is a capital place, in the dead of winter, for stripping poetic theories of their covering.
26. See Public Doc. No. 365, 2d Sess., 17th Congress.
27. This word is pronounced as if written so, not soo. It is a derivative, through the French, from the Latin saltus.
CHAPTER XIV.
Amusements during the winter months, when the temperature is at the lowest point--Etymology of the word Chippewa--A meteor--The Indian "fire-proof"--Temperature and weather--Chippewa interchangeables--Indian names for the seasons--An incident in conjugating verbs--Visiting--Gossip--The fur trade--Todd, McGillvray, Sir Alexander Mackenzie--Wide dissimilarity of the English and Odjibwa syntax--Close of the year.
1822. December 1st. We have now plunged into the depths of a boreal winter. The blustering of tempests, the whistling of winds, and the careering of snow drifts form the daily topics of remark. We must make shift to be happy, with the most scanty means of amusement. Books and studies must supply the most important item in this--at least, so far as I am concerned.
It is observed by Dr. Johnson "that nothing can supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will render knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible." This sententious apothegm is thrown out in contemplating the life of Savage, one of the English poets who united some of the highest requisites of genius with the lowest personal habits. But how much instruction does it convey to all! It does not fall to the lot of all to have wit or genius, or to be eminent in knowledge. None, however, who are not absolute idiots are without some share of the one or the other. And in proportion as these gifts are possessed, how fruitless, and comparatively useless do they become, if not governed by prudence, assiduity, and regularity!
3d. The Indian tribes in this vicinity call themselves Ojibwäg. This expression is in the plural number. It is rendered singular by taking off the g. The letter a, in this word, is pronounced like a in hate, or ey in obey. Chippewa--often written with a useless terminal y--is the Anglicized pronunciation. The meaning of this seems obscure. The final syllable wä, in compound words, stands for voice. In the ancient Massachusetts language, as preserved by Eliot, in his translation of the Bible, as in Isaiah xi. 14, Chepwoieu means the east.
What a curious subject for speculation the Indian language presents! Since I began to dip into this topic, I have found myself irresistibly carried forward in the inquiry, and been led to resume it, whenever the calls of business or society have been intermitted. I have generally felt, however, while pursuing it, like a mechanist who is required to execute a delicate and difficult work without suitable implements. Technical words may be considered as the working tools of inquiry, and there seems to be a paucity of terms, in our common systems, to describe such a many-syllabled, aggregated language as the Indian. I have been sometimes half inclined to put my manuscripts in the fire, and to exclaim with Dryden, respecting some