30th.  The oldest man in the Ottawa nation, a chief called Nish-caud-jin-in-a, or the Man of Wrath, died this day at L’Arbre Croche, Michigan.  He was between ninety and one hundred years of age, withered and dry, and slightly bent, but still preserving the outlines of a man of strength, good figure, and intellect.  What a mass of reminiscences and elements of history dies with every old person of observation, white or red.

Feb. 4th.  Mr. James H. Lanman writes respecting the prospects of his publishing a history of Michigan—­a subject which I gave him every encouragement to go forward in, while he lived in that State.  The theme is an ambitious one, involving as it does the French era of settlements, and the day for handling it effectively has not yet arrived.  But the sketches that may be made from easily-got, existing materials, may subserve a useful purpose, with the hope always that some new fact may be elicited, which will add to the mass of materials.  “I have been delayed here,” he says, “in preparing the book, and the delay has been occasioned by my publishers having failed.  It is now, however, stereotyped, and will be out in about a fortnight.” [92]

[Footnote 92:  He afterwards re-cast the work, and it was published by the Harpers as one of the volumes of their library.]

21st.  Mr. Bancroft writes to me, giving every encouragement to bring forward before the public my collections and researches on Indian history and language, and expressing his opinion of success, unless I should be “cursed with a bad publisher.”

“Father Duponceau,” he says, “won his prize out of your books, and Gallatin owes much to you.  Go on; persevere; build a monument to yourself and the unhappy Algonquin race.”

Making every allowance for Mr. Bancroft’s enthusiastic way of speaking, it yet appears to me that I should endeavor to publish the results of investigations of Indian subjects.  My connection with the Johnston family has thrown open to me the whole arcanum of the Indian’s thoughts.

I wrote an article for Dr. Absalom Peter’s Magazine, expressing my dissent from the very fanciful explanations of the Dighton Rock characters, as given by Mr. Magrusen in the first volume of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians, published at Copenhagen.  It appears to me that those characters (throwing out two or three) are the Indian Kekewin—­a species of hieroglyphics or symbolic devices, still in vogue among them.  To this view of the matter Mr. Bancroft assents.  “If you have a proof-sheet of your article on the Daneschrift, send it me.  All they say about the Dighton Rock is, I think, the sublime of humbuggery.”

What is said in the interpreted Sagas, of the Skroellings or Esquimaux being in New England at the date of Eric’s voyage (A.  D. 1001) is, I think, problematical.  Those tribes are not known to have extended further south than the Straits of Belleisle, about 60 deg., or to parts of Newfoundland.  The term deduced from the old journals appear to belong to the Esquimaux proper, rather than to the New England class of the Algonquins.  The Esquimaux had the free use of the sound of the letter l, which was not used at all by the N.E.  Indians.