“There are many excellent persons among them,” she said; “they are a kind, simple, honest people, and some of them are eminently pious.”

“Do they follow any regular industry?”

“Many of them are as regularly industrious as the whites, rising early and continuing at their work in the fields all day.  They are not so attentive as we could wish to the education of their children.  It is difficult to make them send their children regularly to school; they think they confer a favor in allowing us to instruct them, and if they happen to take a little offense their children are kept at home.  The great evil against which we have to guard is the love of strong drink.  When this is offered to an Indian, it seems as if it was not in his nature to resist the temptation.  I have known whole congregations of Indians, good Indians, ruined and brought to nothing by the opportunity of obtaining whisky as often as they pleased.”

We inquired whether the numbers of the people at the mission were diminishing.  She could not speak with much certainty as to this point, having been only a year and a half at the mission, but she thought there was a gradual decrease.

“The families of the Indians,” she said, in answer to one of my questions, “are small.  In one family at the village are six children, and it is the talk of all the Indians, far and near, as something extraordinary.  Generally the number is much smaller, and more than half the children die in infancy.  Their means would not allow them to rear many children, even if the number of births was greater.”

Such appears to be the destiny of the red race while in the presence of the white—­decay and gradual extinction, even under circumstances apparently the most favorable to its preservation.

On Monday we left the Falls of St. Mary, in the steamer General Scott, on our return to Mackinaw.  There were about forty passengers on board, men in search of copper-mines, and men in search of health, and travellers from curiosity, Virginians, New Yorkers, wanderers from Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, and I believe several other states.  On reaching Mackinaw in the evening, our party took quarters in the Mansion House, the obliging host of which stretched his means to the utmost for our accommodation.  Mackinaw is at the present moment crowded with strangers; attracted by the cool healthful climate and the extreme beauty of the place.  We were packed for the night almost as closely as the Potawottamies, whose lodges were on the beach before us.  Parlors and garrets were turned into sleeping-rooms; beds were made on the floors and in the passages, and double-bedded rooms were made to receive four beds.  It is no difficult feat to sleep at Mackinaw, even in an August night, and we soon forgot, in a refreshing slumber, the narrowness of our quarters.

Letter XXXVII.

The Island of Mackinaw.