before him.  But there is a perpetual watch necessary to protect him from deception, and this necessity becomes stringent in the exact proportion that a tribe has funds or treaty rights of any kind.  If these attempts to make the Indian a stalking-horse for masked or misstated objects be independently met, and with just sentiments of dissent, the agent of the government is liable to calumniation, and it becomes the policy of unscrupulous men to get their affairs placed in hands having less well-defined notions of moral right, or more easily swayed in their opinions.

7th.  The season of New-year has been as usual a holiday, that is to say, a time of hilarity and good wishes, with the Indians in this vicinity, numbers of which have visited the office.

20th.  Some of the superstitions of the Indians are explicable only on the ground of their belief in magic.  An old blind man of Grand Traverse Bay, called Ogimauwish (literally bad chief), referring to the early period of the visits of Europeans to the continent, related the following:—­

When the whites first came to this country, wars and atrocious cruelties existed between the new race of men and the Indians.  When this animosity began to abate, a treaty was held, which was attended by the Indians far and wide.  They were told by an interpreter, one of the white men who had already learned their language, that the Indian tribes appeared, in the eyes of white men, while in action, like the beasts of the forests and the birds of prey, changing from one form to the other, and that the bullets of the foreigners had no effect on them.  The reason for this exemption from harm was this:—­

In those times the Indians made use of the Pazhikewash, or buffalo-weed, which is still used by some of them to this day, especially on war excursions.  This made them invulnerable to balls.  They made a liquor from it, and sprinkled themselves and their implements, and carried it in their meda bags.  They are under the belief that this medicine not only wards off the balls and missiles, but tends to make them invisible.  This, with their reliance on the guardian spirits of whom they have dreamed at their initial fasts, throws around them a double influence, making them both invisible and invulnerable.

There is a root used by the Pillagers, to which they attribute similar protecting influences, or attribute the gift of courage in war.  It is called by them OZHIGAWAK.

22d.  Theodoric (vide ante, April 19th,) writes me from Detroit in terms of the kindest appreciation for my kindness of him.  On his arrival at Mackinack he most acceptably executed several trusts—­writing a good hand, being of gentlemanly manners and deportment, and an obliging disposition, and withal a high moral tone of character—­as the winter drew on, I judged he would make a good representative for the county in the legislature, and started him in political life.  He received the popular vote, and proceeded to the Capitol accordingly.