Beyond The Island Of St. Joseph We Passed Several Islets Of Rock With
Fir-Trees Growing From The Clefts.
Here, in summer, I was told, the
Indians often set up their wigwams, and subsist by fishing.
There were
none in sight as we passed, but we frequently saw on either shore the
skeletons of the Chippewa habitations. These consist, not like those of
the Potawottamies, of a circle of sticks placed in the form of a cone, but
of slender poles bent into circles, so as to make an almost regular
hemisphere, over which, while it serves as a dwelling, birch-bark and mats
of bulrushes are thrown.
On the western side of the passage, opposite to St. Joseph's Island,
stretches the long coast of Sugar Island, luxuriant with an extensive
forest of the sugar-maple. Here the Indians manufacture maple-sugar in the
spring. I inquired concerning their agriculture.
"They plant no corn nor squashes," said a passenger, who had resided for
some time at the Sault; "they will not ripen in this climate; but they
plant potatoes in the sugar-bush, and dig them when the spring opens. They
have no other agriculture; they plant no beans as I believe the Indians do
elsewhere."
A violent squall of wind and rain fell upon the water just as we entered
that broad part of the passage which bears the name of Muddy Lake. In
ordinary weather the waters are here perfectly pure and translucent, but
now their agitation brought up the loose earth from the shallow bottom,
and made them as turbid as the Missouri, with the exception of a narrow
channel in the midst where the current runs deep. Rocky hills now began to
show themselves to the east of us; we passed the sheet of water known by
the name of Lake George, and came to a little river which appeared to have
its source at the foot of a precipitous ridge on the British side. It is
called Garden River, and a little beyond it, on the same side, lies Garden
Village, inhabited by the Indians. It was now deserted, the Indians having
gone to attend a great assemblage of their race, held on one of the
Manitoulin Islands, where they are to receive their annual payments from
the British government. Here were log-houses, and skeletons of wigwams,
from which the coverings had been taken. An Indian, when he travels, takes
with him his family and his furniture, the matting for his wigwam, his
implements for hunting and fishing, his dogs and cats, and finds a home
wherever he finds poles for a dwelling. A tornado had recently passed over
the Garden Village. The numerous girdled-trees which stood on its little
clearing, had been twisted off midway or near the ground by the wind, and
the roofs had, in some instances, been lifted from the cabins.
At length, after a winding voyage of sixty miles, between wild banks of
forest, in some places smoking with fires, in some looking as if never
violated either by fire or steel, with huge carcasses of trees mouldering
on the ground, and venerable trees standing over them, bearded with
streaming moss, we came in sight of the white rapids of the Sault Sainte
Marie. We passed the humble cabins of the half-breeds on either shore,
with here and there a round wigwam near the water; we glided by a white
chimney standing behind a screen of fir-trees, which, we were told, had
belonged to the dwelling of Tanner, who himself set fire to his house the
other day, before murdering Mr. Schoolcraft, and in a few minutes were at
the wharf of this remotest settlement of the northwest.
Letter XXXV.
Falls of the St. Mary.
Sault Ste. Marie, _August_ 15, 1846.
A crowd had assembled on the wharf of the American village at the Sault
Sainte Marie, popularly called the _Soo_, to witness our landing; men of
all ages and complexions, in hats and caps of every form and fashion, with
beards of every length and color, among which I discovered two or three
pairs of mustaches. It was a party of copper-mine speculators, just
flitting from Copper Harbor and Eagle River, mixed with a few Indian and
half-breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I saw a face or two quite
familiar in Wall-street.
I had a conversation with an intelligent geologist, who had just returned
from an examination of the copper mines of Lake Superior. He had pitched
his tent in the fields near the village, choosing to pass the night in
this manner, as he had done for several weeks past, rather than in a
crowded inn. In regard to the mines, he told me that the external tokens,
the surface indications, as he called them, were more favorable than those
of any copper mines in the world. They are still, however, mere surface
indications; the veins had not been worked to that depth which was
necessary to determine their value with any certainty. The mixture of
silver with the copper he regarded as not giving any additional value to
the mines, inasmuch as it is only occasional and rare. Sometimes, he told
me, a mass of metal would be discovered of the size of a man's fist, or
smaller, composed of copper and silver, both metals closely united, yet
both perfectly pure and unalloyed with each other. The masses of virgin
copper found in beds of gravel are, however, the most remarkable feature
of these mines. One of them which has been discovered this summer, but
which has not been raised, is estimated to weigh twenty tons. I saw in the
propeller Independence, by which this party from the copper mines was
brought down to the Sault, one of these masses, weighing seventeen hundred
and fifty pounds, with the appearance of having once been fluid with heat.
It was so pure that it might have been cut in pieces by cold steel and
stamped at once into coin.
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