“In the fight which Lieut.  Powell had with the Indians, a Doctor Lutner was killed, who was a scientific man, and had joined the expedition to botanize, &c.  He had already done something in that way, and would have done much more.  Such a life is a great loss.”

CHAPTER LXII.

Indiana tampered with at Grand River—­Small-pox in the Missouri Valley—­Living history at home—­Sunday schools—­Agriculture—­Indian names—­Murder of the Glass family—­Dr. Morton’s inquiries respecting Indian crania—­Necessity of one’s writing his name plain—­Michigan Gazetteer in preparation—­Attempt to make the Indian a political pack-horse—­Return to the Agency of Michilimackinack—­Indian skulls phrenologically examined—­J.  Toulmin Smith—­Cherokee question—­Trip to Grand River—­Treaty and annuity payments—­The department accused of injustice to the Indians.

1838. March 2d.  LIEUT.  E. S. SIBLEY, U.S.A., called at the office, and reported certain things which had been put into the heads of the Indians of Grand River, by interested persons, which they had at the recent annuity payments, requested him to state to me.  Also, the fact of an outrage upon one of their number, committed by a white person, which should have been redressed at once by the civil magistrates.  There is but one way of escape for the Indians living in white communities, that is, to place them, at once, under the protection, and subject to the penalties of our criminal and civil codes.

3d.  Renewed and confirmatory accounts are published at St. Louis, of the desolating effects of the small-pox among the Indian tribes on the Missouri.  In addition to the tribes mentioned in the first accounts as having suffered, the Upsarokees, or Crows, have been dreadfully afflicted.  The various bands of the Pie-gans, Blood Indians, and Blackfeet, have lost great numbers.  And the visitation of this appalling disease, against which they have no remedy, has been one of the severest ever felt by these tribes.  Compared to it, the loss that the Saginaws and other local bands in Michigan have felt, is small; but it is an instructive fact, that the outbreak has been concurrent in point of time, on the Missouri and in Michigan, which would seem to imply a climatic condition of the atmosphere, on a wide scale, favorable to morbid eruptions.

6th.  A.E.  Wing, Esq., declines to deliver the annual address before the Michigan Historical Society, owing to other engagements.  Few men who have capacity are found willing to devote the time necessary for the preparation of a literary address, even where the materials for it would appear to lie ready.  The pressing practical calls of life, in a new country, where there is no hereditary wealth, appear to furnish a valid reason for this.  But another reason is, that the materials and frame-work of an address are sought for at too great a distance, and are thought to lie too deeply buried, to be disinterred