[Footnote 29:  I found graywacke in situ at Iron River, in Lake Superior, in 1826, and subsequently at Presque Isle River, where it is slaty, and fine even grained, and apparently suitable for some economical uses.]

The thermometer has stood at 25 deg. below zero a few days during the season.  It was noticed at 10 deg. below, this morning.  Notwithstanding the decidedly wintry character of the day, I received a visit from Mr. Siveright, a Canadian gentleman, who came across the expanse of ice on snow shoes.  I loaned him Silliman’s “Travels in England and Scotland,” feeling a natural desire to set off our countrymen, as authors and travelers, to the best advantage.  Mr. S., who has spent several years at the north, mentioned that each of the Indian tribes has something peculiar in the fashion of their snow shoes.  The Chippewas form theirs with acute points fore and aft, resembling two inverted sections of a circle.  The Crees make a square point in front, tapering away gradually to the heel.  The Chippewyans turn up the fore point, so that it may offer less resistance in walking.  Females have their snow shoes constructed different from the men’s.  The difference consists in the shape and size of the bows.  The netting is more nicely wrought and colored, and often ornamented, particularly in those worn by girls, with tassels of colored worsted.  The word “shoe,” as applied to this apparatus of the feet, is a complete misnomer.  It consists of a net-work of laced skin, extended between light wooden bows tied to the feet, the whole object of which is to augment the space pressed upon, and thus bear up the individual on the surface of the snow.

I devoted the leisure hours of the day to the grammatical structure of the Indian language.  There is reason to suppose the word moneto not very ancient.  It is, properly speaking, not the name for God, or Jehovah, but rather a generic term for spiritual agency in their mythology.  The word seems to have been derived from the notion of the offerings left upon rocks and sacred places, being supernaturally taken away.  In any comparative views of the language, not much stress should be laid upon the word, as marking a difference from other stocks. Maneton, in the Delaware, is the verb “to make.” Ozheton is the same verb in Chippewa.

7th.  History teaches its lessons in small, as well as great things.  Vessels from Albemarle, in Virginia, in 1586, first carried the potato to Ireland.  Thomas Harriot says the natives called it open-awk.  The Chippewas, at this place, call the potato open-eeg; but the termination eeg is merely a form of the plural. Open (the e sounded like short i) is the singular form.  Thomas Jefferson gives the word “Wha-poos” as the name of the Powhatanic tribes for hare.  The Chippewa term for this animal is Wa-bos, usually pronounced by white men Wa-poos.