Wau-bun

Wau-bun

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wau-bun, by Juliette Augusta Magill
Kinzie This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
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Title: Wau-bun The Early Day in the Northwest
Author: Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
Release Date: April 27, 2004 [EBook #12183]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WAU-BUN,
THE
EARLY DAY IN THE NORTHWEST.
BY
MRS. JOHN H. KINZIE,
OF CHICAGO.

"If we but knew the exact meaning of the word 'WAU-BUN,' we
should be happy."--Critic.
"WAU-BUN--The dawn--the break of day."--Ojibeway Vocabulary.

* * * * *
PHILADELPHIA
1873

PREFACE.
Every work partaking of the nature of an autobiography is supposed to
demand an apology to the public. To refuse such a tribute, would be to
recognize the justice of the charge, so often brought against our
countrymen--of a too great willingness to be made acquainted with the
domestic history and private affairs of their neighbors.
It is, doubtless, to refute this calumny that we find travellers, for the
most part, modestly offering some such form of explanation as this, to
the reader: "That the matter laid before him was, in the first place,
simply letters to friends, never designed to be submitted to other eyes,
and only brought forward now at the solicitation of wiser judges than
the author himself."
No such plea can, in the present instance, be offered. The record of
events in which the writer had herself no share, was preserved in
compliance with the suggestion of a revered relative, whose name often
appears in the following pages. "My child," she would say, "write these
things down, as I tell them to you. Hereafter our children, and even
strangers, will feel interested in hearing the story of our early lives and
sufferings." And it is a matter of no small regret and self-reproach, that
much, very much, thus narrated was, through negligence, or a spirit of
procrastination, suffered to pass unrecorded.
With regard to the pictures of domestic life and experience (preserved,
as will be seen, in journals, letters, and otherwise), it is true their
publication might have been deferred until the writer had passed away
from the scene of action; and such, it was supposed, would have been
their lot--that they would only have been dragged forth hereafter, to
show to a succeeding generation what "The Early Day" of our Western
homes had been. It never entered the anticipations of the most sanguine
that the march of improvement and prosperity would, in less than a
quarter of a century, have so obliterated the traces of "the first
beginning," that a vast and intelligent multitude would be crying out for
information in regard to the early settlement of this portion of our
country, which so few are left to furnish.

An opinion has been expressed, that a comparison of the present times
with those that are past, would enable our young people, emigrating
from their luxurious homes at "the East," to bear, in a spirit of patience
and contentment, the slight privations and hardships they are at this day
called to meet with. If, in one instance, this should be the case, the
writer may well feel happy to have incurred even the charge of egotism,
in giving thus much of her own history.
It may be objected that all that is strictly personal, might have been
more modestly put forth under the name of a third person; or that the
events themselves and the scenes might have been described, while
those participating in them might have been kept more in the
background. In the first case, the narrative would have lost its air of
truth and reality--in the second, the experiment would merely have
been tried of dressing up a theatre for representation, and omitting the
actors.
Some who read the following sketches may be inclined to believe that a
residence among our native brethren and an attachment growing out of
our peculiar relation to them, have exaggerated our sympathies, and our
sense of the wrongs they have received at the hands of the whites. This
is not the place to discuss that point. There is a tribunal at which man
shall be judged for that which he has meted out to his fellow-man.
May our countrymen take heed that their legislation shall never unfit
them to appear "with joy, and not with grief," before that tribunal!
CHICAGO, July, 1855.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
Departure from Detroit

CHAPTER II.
Michilimackinac--American Fur Company--Indian Trade--Mission
School--Point St. Ignace

CHAPTER