The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
NOTED RED MEN AND WOMEN
WHO HAVE APPEARED ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT.
WABOJEEG, OR THE WHITE FISHER.
This individual has indelibly interwoven his name with the history of
the Chippewa nation, during the latter half of the 18th century. His
ancestors had, from the earliest times, held the principal chieftainship
in lake Superior. His father, Ma-mongazida, was the ruling chief during
the war of the conquest of the Canadas by the British crown. In common
with his tribe and the northern nations generally, he was the fast
friend of the French government, and was present with his warriors,
under Gen. Montcalm, at the loss of Quebec, in 1759. He carried a short
speech from that celebrated officer to his people in the north, which is
said to have been verbally delivered a short time before he went to the
field.
The period of the fall of the French power in the Canadas, is one of the
most marked events in Indian reminiscence throughout all northwest
America. They refer to the days of French supremacy as a kind of golden
era, when all things in their affairs were better than they now are; and
I have heard them lament over the change as one which was in every
respect detrimental to their power and happiness. No European nation, it
is evident from these allusions, ever pleased them as well. The French
character and manners adapted themselves admirably to the existing
customs of forest life. The common people, who went up into the interior
to trade, fell in with their customs with a degree of plasticity and an
air of gaiety and full assent, which no other foreigners have, at least
to the same extent, shown. These _Couriers du Bois_ had not much to
boast of on the score of rigid morals themselves. They had nearly as
much superstition as the wildest Indians. They were in fact, at least
nine-tenths of them, quite as illiterate. Very many of them were far
inferior in their mental structure and capacity to the bold, eloquent,
and well formed and athletic northern chiefs and hunters. They respected
their religious and festive ceremonies. They never, as a chief once told
me, _laughed_ at them. They met their old friends on their annual
returns from Montreal, with a kiss. They took the daughters of the red
men for wives, and reared large families, who thus constituted a strong
bond of union between the two races, which remains unbroken at this
day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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