30th.  Chusco dies.

Completed and transmitted the returns and abstracts of the year’s proceedings and expenditures.

Oct 1st.  I sent the interpreter and farmers of the Department to perform the funeral rites for Chusco, the Ottawa jossakeed, who died yesterday at the house erected for him on Round Island.  He was about 70 years of age; a small man, of light frame and walked a little bent.  He had an expression of cunning and knowingness, which induced his people, when young, to think he resembled the muskrat, just rising from the water, after a dive.  This trait was implied by his name.  For many years he had acted as a jossakeed, or seer, for his tribe.  In this business he told me that the powers he relied on, were the spirits [81] of the tortoise, crow, swan, and woodpecker.  These he considered his familiar spirits, who received their miraculous power to aid him directly from Mudjee Moneto, or the Great Evil Spirit.  After the establishment of the Mission at Mackinack, his wife embraced Christianity.  This made him mad.  At length his mind ran so much on the theme, that he fell into doubts and glooms when thinking it over, and finally embraced Christianity himself; and he was admitted, after a probation of a year or two, to church membership.  I asked him, after this period, how he had deceived his people by the art of powwowing, or jugglery.  He said that he had accomplished it by the direct influence of Satan.  He had addressed him, on these occasions, and sung his songs to him, beating the drum or shaking the rattle.  He adhered firmly to this opinion.  He appeared to have great faith in the atonement of Christ, and relied with extraordinary simplicity upon it.  He gave a striking proof of this, the autumn after his conversion, when he went with his wife, according to custom, to dig his potatoes on a neighboring island.  The wife immediately began to dig.  “Stop,” said he, “let us first kneel and return thanks for their growth.”  He was aware of his former weakness on the subject of strong drink, and would not indulge in it after he became a church member.

[Footnote 81:  Indians believe animals have souls.]

3d.  Received an application for relief from the Black River Chippewas, near Fort Gratiot.  It is astonishing how completely the resources of the Indians have failed with the game, on which they formerly relied.  When a calamity arrives, such as a white settlement would surmount without an effort, they at once become objects of public charity.  Kittemagizzi is their immediate cry.  This is now raised by the Black River band, under the influence of small-pox.

14th.  Received a copy of the treaty of the 29th of July last with the Chippewas.  This tribe, like all the other leading tribes of the race, is destined to fritter away their large domain for temporary and local ends, without making any general and permanent provision for their prosperity.  The system of temporary annuities will, at last, leave them without a home.  When the buffalo, and the deer, and the beaver, are extinct, the Indian must work or die.  In a higher view, there is no blessing which is not pronounced in connection with labor and faith.  These the nation falter at.