I attended worship at the Fort, at the Sault, on Sunday.  The services were conducted by the chaplain, who is of the Methodist persuasion and a missionary at the place, assisted by the Baptist missionary.  I looked about me for some evidence of the success of their labors, but among the worshipers I saw not one male of Indian descent.  Of the females, half a dozen, perhaps, were of the half-caste; and as two of these walked away from the church, I perceived that they wore a fringed clothing for the ankles, as if they took a certain pride in this badge of their Indian extraction.

In the afternoon we drove down the west bank of the river to attend religious service at an Indian village, called the Little Rapids, about two miles and a half from the Sault.  Here the Methodists have built a mission-house, maintain a missionary, and instruct a fragment of the Chippewa tribe.  We found the missionary, Mr. Speight, a Kentuckian, who has wandered to this northern region, quite ill, and there was consequently no service.

We walked through the village, which is prettily situated on a swift and deep channel of the St. Mary, where the green waters rush between the main-land and a wooded island.  It stands on rich meadows of the river, with a path running before it, parallel with the bank, along the velvet sward, and backed at no great distance by the thick original forest, which not far below closes upon the river on both sides.  The inhabitants at the doors and windows of their log-cabins had a demure and subdued aspect; they were dressed in their clean Sunday clothes, and the peace and quiet of the place formed a strong contrast to the debaucheries we had witnessed at the village by the Falls.  We fell in with an Indian, a quiet little man, of very decent appearance, who answered our questions with great civility.  We asked to whom belonged the meadows lying back of the cabins, on which we saw patches of rye, oats, and potatoes.

“Oh, they belong to the mission; the Indians work them.”

“Are they good people, these Indians?”

“Oh yes, good people.”

“Do they never drink too much whisky?”

“Well, I guess they drink too much whisky sometimes.”

There was a single wigwam in the village, apparently a supplement to one of the log-cabins.  We looked in and saw two Indian looms, from which two unfinished mats were depending.  Mrs. Speight, the wife of the missionary, told us that, a few days before, the village had been full of these lodges; that the Indians delighted in them greatly, and always put them up during the mosquito season; “for a mosquito,” said the good lady, “will never enter a wigwam;” and that lately, the mosquitoes having disappeared, and the nights having grown cooler, they had taken down all but the one we saw.

We passed a few minutes in the house of the missionary, to which Mrs. Speight kindly invited us.  She gave a rather favorable account of the Indians under her husband’s charge, but manifestly an honest one, and without any wish to extenuate the defects of their character.