B. found this was the crisis, where he must take a stand or be “rode over rough shod” by this man; his wife, who was present was much alarmed, and begged he would get the skin for the Indian, but he told her that “either he or the Indian would soon be master of his house, and if she was afraid to see it decided which was to be so, she had better retire.”  He turned to Key-way-no-wut, and addressed him in a stern voice as follows:  “I will not give you the skin.  How often have you come to my house, and I have shared with you what I had.  I gave you tobacco when you were well, and medicine when you were sick, and you never went away from my wigwam with your hands empty.  And this is the way you return my treatment to you.  I had thought you were a man and a chief, but you are not, you are nothing but an old woman.  Leave this house, and never enter it again.”  Mr. B. said he expected the Indian would attempt his life when he said this, but that he had placed himself in a position so that he could defend himself, and he looked straight into the Indian’s eye, and like other wild beasts he quailed before the glance of mental and moral courage.  He calmed down at once, and soon began to make apologies.  Mr. B. then told him kindly, but firmly, that, if he wished to walk in the same path with him, he must walk as straight as the crack on the floor before them; adding that he would not walk with anybody who would jostle him by walking so crooked as he had done.  He was perfectly tamed, and Mr. B. said he never had any more trouble with him.”

The conviction here livingly enforced of the superiority on the side of the white man, was thus expressed by the Indian orator at Mackinaw while we were there.  After the customary compliments about sun, dew, &c., “This,” said he, “is the difference between the white and the red man; the white man looks to the future and paves the way for posterity.”  This is a statement uncommonly refined for an Indian; but one of the gentlemen present, who understood the Chippeway, vouched for it as a literal rendering of his phrases; and he did indeed touch the vital point of difference.  But the Indian, if he understands, cannot make use of his intelligence.  The fate of his people is against it, and Pontiac and Philip have no more chance, than Julian in the times of old.

Now that I am engaged on this subject, let me give some notices of writings upon it, read either at Mackinaw or since my return.

Mrs. Jameson made such good use of her brief visit to these regions, as leaves great cause to regret she did not stay longer and go farther; also, that she did not make more use of her acquaintance with, indeed, adoption by, the Johnson family.  Mr. Johnson seems to have been almost the only white man who knew how to regard with due intelligence and nobleness, his connexion with the race.  Neither French or English, of any powers of sympathy, or poetical apprehension, have lived among the Indians without high feelings of enjoyment.  Perhaps no luxury has been greater, than that experienced by the persons, who, sent either by trade or war, during the last century, into these majestic regions, found guides and shelter amid the children of the soil, and recognized in a form so new and of such varied, yet simple, charms, the tie of brotherhood.