and legends of the Chippewas--First assemblage of a
legislative council at Michigan--Mineralogy and geology--Disasters of
the War of 1812--Character of the new legislature--Laconic
note--Narrative of a war party, and the disastrous murders committed at
Lake Pepin in July 1824--Speech of a friendly Indian chief from Lake
Superior on the subject--Notices of mineralogy and geology in the
west--Ohio and Erie Canal--Morals--Lafayette's progress--Hooking
minerals--A philosophical work on the Indians--Indian biography by
Samuel L. Conant--Want of books on American archaeology--Douglass's
proposed work on the expedition of 1820.

1824. _May 30th_. Having found, in the circle of the Chippewa wigwams, a
species of oral fictitious lore, I sent some specimens of it to friends
in the lower country, where the subject excited interest. "I am
anxious," writes a distinguished person, under this date, "that you
should bring with you, when you come down, your collection of Indian
tales. I should be happy to see them." [43] That the Indians should
possess this mental trait of indulging in lodge stories, impressed me as
a novel characteristic, which nothing I had ever heard of the race had
prepared me for. I had always heard the Indian spoken of as a
revengeful, bloodthirsty man, who was steeled to endurance and delighted
in deeds of cruelty. To find him a man capable of feelings and
affections, with a heart open to the wants, and responsive to the ties
of social life, was amazing. But the surprise reached its acme, when I
found him whiling away a part of the tedium of his long winter evenings
in relating tales and legends for the amusement of the lodge circle.
These fictions were sometimes employed, I observed, to convey
instruction, or impress examples of courage, daring, or right action.
But they were, at all times, replete with the wild forest notions of
spiritual agencies, necromancy, and demonology. They revealed abundantly
the causes of his hopes and fears--his notions of a Deity, and his
belief in a future state.

[Footnote 43: This counsel I pursued in the autumn of that year, and
published specimens of the legends in the winter of 1825, in "Travels in
the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley," and in 1839 submitted
to the public two duodecimo volumes, under the title of "Algie
Researches, Part I."]

_June 18th_. Michigan is gradually assuming steps which are a part of
that train which will in time develop her resources a