31st.  The people of this territory have evinced, in various ways, great uneasiness in not being admitted, by a preparatory act of Congress, to the right of forming a state constitution, and admission into the Union, agreeably to the Ordinance of 1787.  The population has, for some time, been more than sufficient to authorize one representative.  In some respects, the term of territorial probation and privilege has been extraordinary, and bears a striking analogy to that of a plant, thrice plucked up by the roots, and watered, and nourished, and set out again.  It has been twenty-nine years a territory, having been first organized, I believe, in 1805, For the first seven years it was under the government of Gen. Hull, by whom it was lost, and fell under foreign conquest.  It then had about a year of military government under Gen. Brock, and, after being re-conquered in 1814, lived on, awhile, under the rule of our own commanding generals.  Gen. Cass was, I think, appointed by Mr. Monroe, late in 1814, and governed it for the long period of eighteen years.  Geo. B. Porter succeeded, and, since his death, there has been a confused interregnum of secretaries.

“Thrice plucked up” was it, by the total destruction of Detroit (which was in fact the territory) by fire in 1806, by the terrible Indian and British war in 1812, and by the Indian war of the Black Hawk of 1832.  It has suffered in blood and toil more than any, or all the other north-western territories together.  It has been the entering point for all hostilities from Canada; and, to symbolize its position, it has been the anvil on which all the grand weapons of our Indian scath have been hammered.  Its old French and American families have been threshed by the flail of war, like grain on a floor.  And it is no wonder that the people are tired of waiting for sovereignty, and think of taking the remedy into their own hands.  On the 9th of September, the Legislative Council passed an act for taking the census.  The result shows a population of 85,856, in the fourteen lower counties, and the first steps for a self-called convention are in progress.

CHAPTER LIIII.

Indications of a moral revolution in the place—­Political movements at Detroit—­Review of the state of society at Michilimackinack, arising from its being the great central power of the north-west fur trade—­A letter from Dr. Greene—­Prerequisites of the missionary function—­Discouragements—­The state of the Mackinack Mission—­Problem of employing native teachers and evangelists—­Letter of Mr. Duponceau—­Ethnological gossip—­Translation of the Bible into Algonquin—­Don M. Najera—­Premium offered by the French Institute—­Persistent Satanic influence among the Indian tribes—­Boundary dispute with Ohio—­Character of the State Convention.