Wau-bun | Page 4

Indian and the white man.
"Do the Indians speak French?" I inquired of my husband.
"No; this is a fashion they have learned of the French traders during many years of intercourse."
Not less hearty was the greeting of each Canadian _engagé_, as he trotted forward to pay his respects to "Monsieur John," and to utter a long string of felicitations, in a most incomprehensible patois. I was forced to take for granted all the good wishes showered upon "Madame John," of which I could comprehend nothing but the hope that I should be happy and contented in my "vie sauvage."
The object of our early walk was to visit the Mission-house and school which had been some few years previously established at this place by the Presbyterian Board of Missions. It was an object of especial interest to Mr. and Mrs. Stuart, and its flourishing condition at this period, and the prospects of extensive future usefulness it held out, might well gladden their philanthropic hearts. They had lived many years on the island, and had witnessed its transformation, through God's blessing on Christian efforts, from a worldly, dissipated community to one of which it might almost be said, "Religion was every man's business." This mission establishment was the beloved child and the common centre of interest of the few Protestant families clustered around it. Through the zeal and good management of Mr. and Mrs. Ferry, and the fostering encouragement of the congregation, the school was in great repute, and it was pleasant to observe the effect of mental and religious culture in subduing the mischievous, tricky propensities of the half-breed, and rousing the stolid apathy of the genuine Indian.
These were the palmy days of Mackinac. As the head-quarters of the American Fur Company, and the entrep?t of the whole Northwest, all the trade in supplies and goods on the one hand, and in furs and products of the Indian country on the other, was in the hands of the parent establishment or its numerous outposts scattered along Lakes Superior and Michigan, the Mississippi, or through still more distant regions.
Probably few are ignorant of the fact, that all the Indian tribes, with the exception of the Miamis and the Wyandots, had, since the transfer of the old French possessions to the British Crown, maintained a firm alliance with the latter. The independence achieved by the United States did not alter the policy of the natives, nor did our Government succeed in winning or purchasing their friendship. Great Britain, it is true, bid high to retain them. Every year the leading men of the Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottowattamies, Menomonees, Winnebagoes, Sauks, and Foxes, and even still more remote tribes, journeyed from their distant homes to Fort Malden in Upper Canada, to receive their annual amount of presents from their Great Father across the water. It was a master-policy thus to keep them in pay, and had enabled those who practised it to do fearful execution through the aid of such allies in the last war between the two countries.
The presents they thus received were of considerable value, consisting of blankets, broadcloths or strouding, calicoes, guns, kettles, traps, silver-works (comprising arm-bands, bracelets, brooches; and ear-bobs), looking-glasses, combs, and various other trinkets distributed with no niggardly hand.
The magazines and store-houses of the Fur Company at Mackinac 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_,[1] beans and the folles avoines,[2] or wild rice; while the squaws added to their quota of merchandise 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, etc., etc.
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 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,