Major Jno.  Garland, U.S.A., having succeeded Major Whiting as the general disbursing officer on this frontier, arrived early in the month.  This officer has been engaged, with his assistants and the aid of the Indian department, about a week, in preparing the pay rolls of the Indian families, and correcting the lists for deaths, births, and new families.  All the payments which were made in silver, at the agency, in my presence, were divided per capita.  This business of counting and division took three days, during which time the proportionate share of $21,000, in half dollars, was paid.  The annuities in provisions, tobacco, &c., were delivered in bulk to the chiefs of villages, to be divided by them.

Mr. John J. Blois, of Detroit, proposes to publish a gazetteer of Michigan, and writes requesting statistical information, &c., of the upper country, an Indian nomenclature, &c.

Mr. Palfrey writes proposing to me to review Stone’s Life of Brant, and Mr. Dearborn, the publisher at New York, sends me the proofs.

15th.  The payments are finished, and the Indians begin to disperse.  I invested Kabay Noden with his father’s medal, and his uncle, Muckadaywuckwut, with a flag; recommending at the same time the division of the St. Mary’s Chippewas into three bands, agreeably to fixed geographical boundaries.

Having finished the business of the payments, the disbursing agent embarks on board of the steamer Michigan, and the island, which has been thronged for three weeks with Indians, Indian traders, and visitors, began immediately to empty itself of population.  During this assemblage, to pay the Ottawas and Chippewas their annuity, great care and exactitude have been observed by the concurrently acting officers of the army and the Indian department, to carry out strictly the agreements made with them in the spring, by which the payment of half their annuity in silver, due for 1837, was postponed till 1838.  Yet it was reported in a few days, and reiterated by the press, that the Indians had been defrauded out of half their annuities, and that goods, and those of a bad quality, had been given them for silver.  And my name was coupled with the transaction, although the Indians of all nations who were under my charge, in the State of Michigan, had, from first to last, been treated with the kindness and justice of a father.  The Government at Washington came in for no little abuse.  Mrs. Jameson wrote from Toronto, asking “whether it was true that a Miami chief had offered $70,000 to enable the Indian Department to pay their debt to the Indians in specie.”

23d.  The Indians Akukojeesh and Akawkoway brought a case of salvage for my action.  They had found a new carriage body, and harness; a box of 7 by 9 glass, and 18 chairs, floating on the lake (Huron), N.E. of the island.  They supposed the articles had been thrown overboard, in a recent storm, or by a vessel aground on the point of Goose Island, called Nekuhmenis.  The Nekuh is a brant.