head of the Maumee river, at, and near, the place where the town of Fort Wayne now stands. The larger Wea villages were found near the banks of the Wabash river, in the vicinity of post Ouiatenon; and the Shockeys and Piankeshaws dwelt on the banks of the Vermillion rivers, and on the borders of the river Wabash, between Vincennes and Ouiatenon.

Branches of the Pottawattamie, Shawanee, Delaware, and Kickapoo tribes, were, at different periods of time, permitted to enter, and reside at various places, within the boundaries of the large territory which was claimed by the Miamis. In a letter which was written at Vincennes, on the 16th of June, 1793, the writer said: "There are parties of Indians continually coming to and going from this place, where they are furnished with liquors for their skins, in such quantities as they are able to pay for-which disturbs much the good order and peace of the village. They remain here eight or ten days, in one continual round of drunkenness and disorder."

In the summer of the year 1796, a distinguished French author and traveler, Mr. Volney, visited Vincennes, partly to observe, at his leisure, the manners and customs of the Indian tribes in that quarter. This traveler, in a work entitled "A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States of America," says:-"My stay at Vincennes afforded me some knowledge of the Indians who were assembled to barter away the produce of their red hunt. There were four or five hundred of them, men, women, and children, of various tribes, as the Weas, Peorias, Sawkies, Piankeshaws, and Miamis. The men and women roamed all day about the town, merely to get rum; for which they eagerly exchanged their peltry, their toys, their clothes; and, at length, when they had parted with their all, they offered their prayers, and entreaties-never ceasing to drink till they had lost their senses."

In 1805, Governor Harrison, who then resided at Vincennes, in a letter addressed to Governor Tiffin, of Ohio, said: "The dreadful effects which have been produced among our Indian neighbors, by the immense quantities of ardent spirits which have been poured in upon them by our citizens, have long been known and lamented by every friend of humanity."

The national character and the condition of the Miami Indians, in the year 1817, were fairly described in a letter which

was written, in that year, by Benjamin F. Stickney, an Indian Agent, in the service of the United States. The following passages are copied from this letter, which was dated, "Fort Wayne, August 27, 1817," and addressed to Thos. L. McKinney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs. The agent, Mr. Stickney, said: "I shall pay every attention to the subject of your letter, developing the exalted views of philanthropy of the Kentucky Baptist Society for propagating the gospel among the heathen. The civilization of the Indians is not a new subject to me. I have been, between five and six years, in the habit of daily and hourly intercourse with the Indians northwest of the Ohio, and the great question of the practicability of civilizing them ever before me. That I might have an opportunity of casting in my mite to the bettering of the condition of these uncultivated human beings, and the pleasure of observing the change that might be produced on them, were the principal inducements to my surrendering the comforts of civilized society.

"Upon my entering on my duties, I soon found that my speculative opinions were not reducible to practice. What I had viewed, at a distance, as flying clouds, proved, upon my nearer approach, to be impassable mountains. Notwithstanding these discouraging circumstances, I am ready to aid your views by all proper means within my power; and, in so doing, believe I embrace the views of the government of which I am agent. ** It will be proper for me to be more particular, and give you something of my ideas of the nature and extent of the obstacles to be met.

*

"First. The great, and, I fear, insurmountable obstacle is, THE INSATIABLE THIRST FOR INTOXICATING LIQUORS that appears to be born with all the yellow-skin inhabitants of America; and the thirst for gain, of [some of] the citizens of the United States appears to be capable of eluding all the vigilance of government to stop the distribution of liquor among them. When the Indians can not obtain the means of intoxication within their own limits, they will travel any distance to obtain it. There is no fatigue, risk, or expense, that is too great to obtain it. In some cases, it appears to be valued higher than life itself. If a change of habit in this can be effected, all other

1

obstacles may yield. But if the whites can not be restrained from furnishing them with spiritous liquors, nor they from the use of them, I fear all other efforts to extend to them the benefits of civilization will prove fruitless. The knowledge of letters serves as the medium of entering into secret arrangements with the whites, to supply the means of their own destruction, and, within the limits of my intercourse, the principal use of the knowledge of letters or civilized language has been to obtain liquor for themselves or others.

"Secondly. The general aversion to the habits, manners, customs, and dress of civilized people; and, in many cases, an Indian is an object of jealousy for being acquainted with a civilized language, and it is made use of as a subject of reproach against him.

"Thirdly.-General indolence, connected with a firm conviction that the life of a civilized man is that of slavery; and that savage life is manhood, ease, and independence.

*

“Fourthly.—The unfavorable light in which they view the character of the citizens of the United States-believing that their minds are so occupied in trade and speculation, that they never act from any other motives. * * Their opinion of the government of the United States is, in some degree, more favorable; but, secretly, they view all white people as their enemies, and are extremely suspicious of every thing coming from them.

"All the Miamis, and Eel river Miamis, are under my charge, about one thousand four hundred in number; and there are something more than two thousand Pottawattamies who come within my agency. The proportion of children can not be ascertained, but it must be less than among the white inhabitants of the United States. They have had no schools nor missionaries among them since the time of the French Jesuits. They have places that are commonly called villages, but, perhaps, not correctly, as they have no uniform place of residence. During the fall, winter, and part of the spring, they are scattered in the woods, hunting. The respective bands assemble together in the spring at their several ordinary places of resort, where some have rude cabins, made of small logs, covered with bark; but, more commonly, some poles stuck in

the ground and tied together with pliant slips of bark, and covered with large sheets of bark, or a kind of mats made

of flags.

"Near these places of resort they plant some corn. There are eleven of these places of resort, called villages, within my agency. The Miamis and Eel river Miamis reside, principally, on the Wabash, Mississinewa, and Eel river, and the head of White river. The Pottawattamies [reside] on the Tippecanoe, Kankakee, Iroquois, Yellow river, St. Joseph of lake Michigan, the Elkhart, Miami of the lake, the St. Joseph emptying into it, and the St. Mary's river. They all believe in a God, as creator and governor, but have no idea of his will being communicated to man, except as it appears in the creation, or as it appears, occasionally, from his providential government. Some of them have been told of other communications having been made to the white people a long time since, and that it was written and printed; but they have neither conception nor belief in relation to it. Their belief in a future existence is a kind of transubstantiation-a removal from this existence to one more happy, with similar appetites and enjoyments. They talk of a bad spirit, but never express any apprehension of his troubling them in their future existence."

In tracing the history of the Miami Indians, from the present time, backward through a period of one hundred and fifty years, the mind of the enlightened reader must pass, painfully, over a long and mournful picture of ignorance, superstition, injustice, war, barbarity, and the most debasing intemperance. There were some men, of piety and zeal, who, successively entering the field of missionary labors, endeavored to establish among these Indians the foundations of civilization and the doctrines of christianity. But these philanthropists were few in number, with an imperfect knowledge of the language of the Miamis, without schools, without homes, often placing their lives in peril, and in some instances falling the victims of savage violence. Such men were, in the west, the pioneers in the conflict between barbarism and civilization.

At the present day, a few small, mixed, and miserable bands, constitute the remnant of the once powerful Miami nation. Their ignorance, their errors, their misfortunes, and the vices which they learned from bad men of the white race, still cling

to them with unabated power to degrade and destroy. Thus, with the lights of civilization and religion beaming around them, the last fragments of one of the most powerful aboriginal nations of North America are gradually passing away from the earth for ever.

CHAPTER IV.

FRENCH COLONIES IN THE WEST.

THE wars in which France and England were engaged, from 1688 to 1697, retarded the growth of the colonies of those nations in North America; but soon after the peace of Ryswick, Louis XIV determined to send a large number of colonists to Louisiana, and to maintain garrisons among them, for their protection. Lemoine D'Ibberville was appointed governor of Louisiana, and M. de Bienville was commissioned as lieutenantcommandant of the province. Under the direction of these officers, a number of adventurers emigrated from France, in 1698; and, in the course of the succeeding year, founded a settlement at Biloxi, on the northern shores of lake Borgne, between Mobile bay and lake Ponchartrain.

The early efforts which were made by France to establish colonies in the valley of the Mississippi, from Canada to the gulf of Mexico, excited the jealousy, and aroused the fears, of some of the English statesmen of those times. In the year 1698, Dr. D'Avenant, inspector-general of the customs, published some discourses on the public revenues and trade of England. In one of these discourses he said:-"Should the French settle at the disemboguing of the river Mississippi, they would not be long before they made themselves masters of that rich province, which would be an addition to their strength very terrible to Europe, but would more particularly concern England; for, by the opportunity of that settlement, by erecting forts along the several lakes between that river and