rybody an enemy. His view of the state of
Indian society in the wilderness made it a perfect hell. They were
thieves and murderers. No one from the interior agreed with him in this.
The traders, who called him a bad man, represent the Indians as social
when removed from the face of white men, and capable of noble and
generous acts. He was, evidently, his own judge and his own avenger in
every question. I drew out of him some information of the Indian
superstitions, and he was well acquainted practically with the species
of animals and birds in the northern latitudes.

_30th_. A letter informs me that a treaty has just been concluded with
the Potawattomies of St. Joseph's, who cede to the United States about a
million and a half acres, comprising the balance of their lands in
Michigan. I received, at the same time, a few lines from Gen. Cass,
speaking a word for the captive, John Tanner, the object of which was to
suggest his employment as an interpreter in the Indian Department.[57]

[Footnote 57: This man served a short time, but turned out, for eighteen
years, to be the pest of that settlement, being a remarkably suspicious,
lying, bad-minded man, having lost every virtue of the white man, and
accumulated every vice of the Indian. He became more and more morose and
sour because the world would not support him in idleness, and went about
half crazed, in which state he hid himself one day, in 1836, in the
bushes, and shot and killed my brother, James L. Schoolcraft. He then
fled back to the Indians, and has not been caught. The musket with which
this nefarious act was done, is said to have been loaned to him from the
guard-house at Fort Brady. Dr. Bagg pronounced the ball an ounce-ball,
such as is employed in the U.S. service. The wad was the torn leaf of a
hymn book. It was extensively reported by the diurnal press, that I had
been the victim of this unprovoked perfidy.]

_October 31st_. The Indian visits, from remote bands, which were very
remarkable this year, continued through the entire month of August, and
beyond the date at which I dropped the notices of them, during
September, when they were reduced, as party after party returned to the
interior, to the calls of the ordinary bands living about the post, and,
at furthest, to the foot of Lake Superior and the valley and straits of
the St. Mary's. With them, or rather before them, went the traders with
their new outfits and retinues, chiefly from Michilimackinac.