10th.  Lyman M. Warren writes from Lake Superior:  “Our country at present is in a very unsettled state, caused by the unhappy wars between the Sioux and Chippewas.  The latter have been defeated on Rum River—­six men and one woman killed.  All our Chippewas are looking to you for protection, as they consider themselves wronged by the Sioux, the latter being, and constantly hunting within the Chippewa territory.  I am afraid that a very extensive war will commence the ensuing summer, through this region, and the whole upper country, if some effectual method is not adopted to stop it.”

This war has all the bitterness of a war of races—­it is the great Algonquin family against the wide-spread Dacota stock—­the one powerful in the east, the other equally so in the west.  And the measures to be adopted to restrain it, and to curb the young warriors on both sides, who pant for fame and scalps, must ever remain, to a great extent, ineffective and temporary, so long as they are not backed up by strong lines of military posts.  Mr. Calhoun was right in his policy of 1820.

The Rev. Mr. Boutwell writes from the same region:  “We rejoice that you enter so fully into our views and feelings relative to the intellectual and moral improvement of the Indians, and rest assured we can most heartily unite with you in bidding God speed, to such as are willing to go and do them good.”

14th.  John Sunday, a Chippewa evangelist from Upper Canada among the Chippewas of Lake Superior, writes from the Bay of Keweena, where he is stationed during the winter:—­

“I received your kind letter.  I undersand you—­you want here the Indians from this place.  I will tell you what to the Indians doing.  They worshiped Idol God.  They make God their own.  I undersand Mr. D., he told all Indians not going to hear the word of God.  So the Indians he believed him.  He tell the Indians do worship your own way.  Your will get heaven quick is us.  So the Indians they do not care to hear the word of God.

“But some willing to hear preaching.  One family they love to come the meeting.  That Indian, by and by, he got ligion.  He is happy now in his heart.  After he got ligion that Indian say, Indian ligion not good.  I have been worship Idol god many years.  He never make happy.  Now I know Jesus.  His ligion is good, because I feel it in my heart.  I say white people ligion very good.  That Indian he can say all in Lord’s prayer and ten commandments, and apostle creed by heart.  Perhaps you know him.  His name is Shah-wau-ne-noo-tin.

“I never forget your kindness to me.  I thing I shall stay here till the May.  I want it to do what the Lord say.”

Aside from his teaching among the Chippewas, which was unanswerably effective, this letter is of the highest consequence to philology, as its variations from the rules of English syntax and orthography, denote some of the leading principles of aboriginal construction, as they have been revealed to me by the study of the Indian language.  In truth he uses the Indian language to a considerable extent, according to the principles of the Chippewa syntax.