INDIAN LIFE AT KAPOSIA ?

[mdenney]

I am posting this in full because the link to it doesnt always open in the right format for people and some would not know how to get it open..


with pen and pencil on the frontier in 1851; the diary and sketches ...
INDIAN LIFE AT KAPOSIA <hsep> 100</p></item> <item> <p>VIII. ... scene of the treaty at Traverse des Sioux, a trading post and mission station ...
lcweb2.loc.gov/gc/lhbum/17122/17122.sgm




PrefaceContentsIllustrationsWITH PEN AND PENCIL ON THE FRONTIER IN 1851Introduction
040 29
I Down the Ohio to Cincinnati
May 7 th 1 “Fare well” from Chris & Charly 2 and an agreeable conversation with Capt Hill of the army as far as Elicotts mills were the last links to bind me to home Elicotts mills and its neighborhood afford ample study for an Artist & indeed from this point until reaching Union P a the scenery increases in interest, varying from the elegant and semicultivated hills of Elicotts Mills & Frederick county to the grandeur and wildness of the untouched Alleghanies. At the point of Rocks & Carroll's Manor we first see the Mountains 1 At the foot of the page on the inside front cover of the first volume of the diary, is the following notation: Memoranda &c. Journey from Baltim[or]e to St. Paul's Minnesota. May 7 to June 20 th 1851.” It evidently was written after the last entry was made in the volume. 2 Charly and Chris probably were the artist's cousins, Charles Frederick and Christopher Lewis Mayer, the sons of Lewis C.Z. Mayer. In later life Charles became a successful and prominent Baltimore business man; from 1888 to 1896 he was president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. See Journal, 1847-54, p. 148, 168; Mayer, Genealogy, 49, 51. Christopher is listed as the owner of several of Frank's paintings in the index to the latter's Drawings and Paintings. 041 30 forming grand & solemn lines of back ground to the cultivated farms of Frederick [County]. The windings of the Potomac through the thickly wooded gorges of the mountains afford passages of great beauty.
At Cumberland we took the stage 3 in company with two women with children to watch, two young women who carried individually a poodle & collectively a large parrott in a correspondingly combersome cage. An old gentleman, whose attentions to the young ladies aforesaid can only be excused on the ground of unexampled verdancy. [Want of self-respect in those whom we are naturally induced by their venerable appearance to respect leave a mingled feeling in the mind of contempt & sorrow. As to the young women, it need only be said that loss of modesty in women is loss of all that renders her attractive especially if sensuality adds to our disgust.] 4 [Rev d ] 5 Mr Balentyne of Washington, & an intelligent & educated man, & a merchant Mr Goss, a fine specimen of the honest, frank & persevering Western man completed our stages compliment.
3 Mayer traveled as far as Cumberland on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which was completed only to that place. Mayer to Williams, April 21, 1887, Minnesota Historical Society Archives. 4 The passage inclosed in brackets is crossed out with pencil in the original. 5 This word is added in pencil.
The Narrows above Cumberland being the passage for Wills' creek thro' the mountain. This is 042 31wild, grand & stupendous. The rocks on either side rising to many hundred feet & crowned & interspersed with pines & other trees. The great variety of tints produced by the coming leaves mingled with the sober masses of as yet leafless giants of the forest all harmonized by the clear mellow tone of a golden sunset, the mighty shadows cast by the riven mountain & the magnificent repose of the whole scene absolved all feelings of self in admiration of this beautiful work of nature. Further on the mountains increase in loneliness & wildness the marks of elemental strife being evinced in the decapitated tree tops & shattered trunks. Many twisted & turned from their wonted straitness ‘ere they had acquired strength to resist the violence of the storm. Added to this was the mystical effect of the moonlight.
The indistinct distinctness of moonlight has always something peculiarly mysterious and solemn in it but when this is exhibited in such a theatre as the mountains of alleghany present, the grand & massive mountain ranges the skeleton trees shattered by the storm, interspersed with hardy pines of apalling height. The rocks & twisted roots casting fantastic & suggestive shadows. Shadows “of things unseen” more evident than substance, altogether formed a scene portentous & mystic. The moon setting at one o'clock[,] Starlight, & the chill of morning succeeded. Day dawned gradually and beautifully & taking a seat by the driver I enjoyed the perfection of transportation 043 32portation thro' a most beautifully picturesque country.
Walking up Laurel Hill with my fellow travellers we looked down into forests unmutilated by the hand of man. The view from the summit is one of the most extensive probably in the country commanding a great extent of mountain view[,] Uniontown & Brownsville being seen beneath. Breakfasting at Uniontown we pass on to Brownsville thro' a cultivated & undulating country. In these places that effect of the general use of Bitumenous coal is apparent which renders Pittsburg & all places where it is used exclusively & in large quantities so disagreeable a place of residence investing everything & insinuating itself into every crevice and spot no matter how retired or secured, it constitutes an atmosphere of dirt & dust.
The Monongahela river is elegant in its scenery without possessing the grandeur of the mountains or the more cultivated character of the homes of succeeding Anglo Saxon generations. 6 Here the Steamers & Craft peculiar to the Western waters first present themselves. A strange feeling of contempt was the first impulse on beholding these “freshwater” craft and Sailors. Always accustomed to consider the steamer but a modification of the ship the appearance of a combination of improved chicken 6 Mayer seems to have left stage at Brownsville on the Monongahela River and to have proceeded by steamboat. 044 33 coops & teackettles slipping down a waveless stream & managed by men half sailors half machinists, lacking all the peculiar freedom of motion & hardy, salty, appearance of our old Tars of the seaboard struck me as a “decided failure”, [“]small potatoes.” Added to this the whole concern seems to be perpetually labouring under the effects of an “awful cough” which it in vain endeavours to get rid of. This state of the system developes itself in a decided system of ague & fever shaking and stewing the whole affair.
At Pittsburg any one with ordinary propensities to cleanliness are at once shocked by the coating of coal dust in which every thing is enveloped. The inhabitants are employed as it wer[e] in the Sysiphian labour of keeping themselves clean—& altho' the majority seem long since to have relinquished the task as hopeless and have turned their attention to combating the elements in another form, reducing them to subjection and use in the form of various articles of glass & iron, manufactures for which the city is famous. forty iron furnaces & thirty five glass-houses belch forth continuous volumes of bitumenous smoke. Beside Iron & glass there are factories of Salt, copper, & cotton The internal improvements connected with Pittsburg are numerous & very substantially constructed. With Miss Helen Dunloss a talented & amiable young lady I visited the hill on the opposite side of the river (Coal Hill)—which commands a very extensive view of 045 34the city & surrounding country. 7 Mr Baum also was extremely kind & attentive.
7 Miss Dunloss returned Mayer's visit in the summer of 1854. Journal, 1847-54, p. 220, 254, 266.
Altho' at first sight rather prejudiced against the steamers, since becoming a passenger on board the Messenger, I have become more reconciled & have found poetry & pictures here as elsewhere. 8 Our faith in the ideal world is strengthened when occasionally there flit across our path faces & forms expressive of the most attractive & endearing feelings. Such was a face I saw to day in company with others probably her relatives all apparently possessed of the same attractive qualities. Fair lady we may never meet again but—I should like deucedly to pain you. It is not in the cabin among our friends of the first class alone that we are to see the expression of the beautiful & affecting, but descend to the deck of the steamer & after contemplating that wonder of human ingenuity the steam engine—“go aft” to the groups of emigrants. Here, a german family, the old man & frau, & his pretty daughter, of whom I got a sketch by stealth. 9 The modesty of the girl the dignity & matronly consequence of the mother the determination & tranquillity of the old man & the hopeful countenance 8 The “Messenger” was a steamboat of the Pittsburgh and Cincinnati Packet line. A picture of this boat appears in Charles H. Ambler, A History of Transportation in the Ohio Valley, 174 (Glendale, California, 1932). 9 The sketches mentioned here are not in the Ayer Collection or the Mayer Papers. 046 35
The Mississippi Valley from Pilot Knob St. Paul appears in the distance.
047 36
Sioux Evening Meal, Traverse des Sioux
048 37 of the ruddy youth who helps himself from the well stored oaken chest of ample family dimensions to his allowance of brown bread & sausage forms a domestic picture of rare beauty. Near this group is a daughter of Erin with her raven looks disordered & her large dark eyes glazed with the bursting tear as resting her head between her hands she watches with a mother's anxiety the sick child extended on the birth [berth] or rather shelf before her. The father is there too, his interest divided between the mother & his child. The numerous groups of [other emigrants with their] 10 children, the rude boatmen engineers & modern cyclops of the boilers give ample employment to an artist or student of nature—should he neglect to look upon the beautiful scenery of the Ohio.
10 The passage in brackets is crossed out in the original diary.
[Seated on his chest which contains his all & that of his faithful grandson is an old blind man, whose only consolation for the loss of the most pleasurable of the senses, consists in enjoying the melody of sound which he draws with surprising skill from the strings of an old violin. His face bears an exp[r]ession of quiet, & beautiful resignation with a tinge of sadness—his grey hair is thrown back over his head & exposes a forehead of benevolent form.] 11
11 The passage in brackets is written at the top of a left-hand page facing the material that immediately precedes it in the printed text.
Cincinnati: May 12 th The steamer Messenger on 049 38which I came down the Ohio I felt with some regret. That attachment which is formed to those with whom we have shared common dangers or pleasure is felt on leaving [those] with whom we have passed several days, having become domesticated to a certain extent aboard our steamer. Could one travel on our Western water with an assurances of safety I know of no more agreeable mode of passing a summer's week. The boat is a moving theatre of [ or ] museum of human Character, here are congregated together natives of every land--American German, Irish, Scotch, Spanish, English and french, Negro & White. The travelling merchants' agent, the farmer, the emigrant the tourist, the invalid, the “blackleg” the military man, the preacher & the artist, while attached to the boat itself are the captain & his boatmen a peculiar race, the negro firemen who entertained us as they passed their town where most of them resided when “home” by shouting at the top of their voices the chorus to one of their glees a huge negro giving the words with stentorian expression--all these again modified by individual character and circumstances, form studies of endless novelty & amusement to an observer. Much information is also acquired by the intercourse with fellow passengers, as there are scarc[e]ly any who many not have seen or known something peculiar to themselves. Seated on the “guards” with my companions a stiff breeze rendering the atmosphere of a delightful temperature 050 39& unoccupied but by the pleasures of the passing moment, no lack of amusement & instruction was to be found—as a succession of beautiful views was presented to us, the wild & uncleared hills, the towns just emerging into existence—then a gradual transition to a more cultivated country where man & nature strove to vary the surface of the earth with every variety of foliage.
Occasionally a steamer passes & is hailed with a rude shout by the rough denizens of the “deck”—which is returned with one equally uncouth from the rival boat. A shout from a flat boat or raft is usually treated with dignified silence. With the exception of an occasional canoe or dug-out crossing the river, the steamer[,] the raft & the flat boat are the only craft seen upon the Ohio's surface. No sail is ever seen, the current being too strong & the course of the stream too tortuous for such mode of propulsion.
The scenery of the Ohio is peculiarly beautiful, it's upper portion passing thro' a richly wooded mountain country the sides of the mountain being seperated in most instances by a narrow skirt of meadow land or “bottom”, these green hills reflected in the waters of the river either by moonlight or day—and sinking away into the faintest blue of the distance, the clear sky above the glassy waters beneath, a pleasant breeze, good company animated by mutual courtesy, and prospect of a happy termination to our journey 051 40beget contentment, & its soothing influence acts upon us irresistib[l]y the joke is passed, information is communicated, friends made, & the sordid cares of commerce & strife of existence forgotten in the contemplation of the beautiful, the true, the natural. On the deck below the same spirit prevails tho' in a ruder development, the boatmen & stokers shout their songs, the fiddle scrapes a merry jig, a “hodown” follows & tho' without a cent in their pocket, “O'er all the ills of life victorious” they thus occasionally vary their labours by giving rein to their animal spirits, no doubt are happier than many who with thousands are strangers to care-less enjoyment. My sketch book greatly amuses my deck friends for there I find ready use for my pencil, poverty and hard labour are strangers to the formality of fashion--the passions show their marks upon the face untrammelled by a hypocritical smirk of exclusiveness & pride. The temptation to endeavor to draw these beautiful shores is irresistable & I have already fill'd half my sketch book with unsuccessfull attempts to hint their beauty.
052 41

[mdenney]

II Art in the Queen city of the West
May 13 th Cincinnati. [Thomas] Cole's “voyage of life” at M r [George K.] Schoenberger's. 1 Rid of the allegory they might be good landscapes tho' far inferior to many of Coles works. 2 Allegories of this description except in the hands of men of the very greatest genius are seldom successful. The boy & boat &c become mere accessories to the landscape & dwindle into theatrical tinsel. Again, the landscape is destroyed by a strained effect & composition. The “Elijah” in the 1 Schoenberger assembled a large collection of art objects at Cincinnati, and a picture gallery was a feature of a magnificent home that he built in a suburb in 1864. He was a director of the Western Art Union of Cincinnati in 1847-48. Biographical Cyclopædia and Portrait Gallery of Ohio, 6:1457 (Cincinnati, 1895); D. J. Kenny, New Illustrated Cincinnati, 221-224 (Cincinnati, 1895); A Sketch of the Women's Art Museum Association of Cincinnati, 8 (Cincinnati, 1886). 2 Thomas Cole was among the earliest American landscape painters to use the native scene as his subject. His “Voyage of Life” is a series of allegorical paintings from which engravings were made. The latter were widely distributed and they were very popular. It is interesting to note that this series of engravings was exhibited at Le Due's book store in St. Paul in June, 1851. Pioneer, June 26, 1851. 053 42 same room is far superior—(why are these allegories failures?).
At M r [Nicholas] Longworth's is the bust of “Genevra” by [Hiram] Powers executed solely by his own hand & presented to his patron as a token of gratitude. 3 How greater than princes is he who can make such returns to his friends! It represents the head of a maiden in full bloom of youth—the features have acquired sufficient sharpness to convey the womanly character without losing the beautiful fullness of the young virgin. The face is full of expression of the tenderest feelings—the feautures classical without the coldness of some Greek sculpture. The “texture” is admirable the effect of flesh perfectly conveyed & the hair & drapery equally careful & truthful, nothing slurred or sketched. How different the style of art of the picture by [Benjamin?] West in the adjoining room representing Laertes & Ophelia. Powers' 3 Longworth settled in 1805 at Cincinnati, where he studied and practiced law, experimented with grape culture, became a successful wine manufacturer, and made a fortune in real estate. He supplied funds that made it possible for Hiram Powers, a talented local sculptor, to go abroad to live. Powers executed his “Ginevra” in 1840; the “Greek Slave,” of which he made six duplicates in marble, was modelled in 1843. One of the latter statues was in the rooms of the Western Art Union at Cincinnati. See Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography, 4:17, 5:97 (New York, 1888); John P. Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati and Its Vicinity, 204 (Cincinnati, 1855). See also Mayer's Journal, p. 156, for the artist's opinion that “The reputation which Powers acquired in Europe awoke the Cincinnatians to the appreciation of Native talent and they have manfully stood by their Artists ever since.” 054 43 Greek slave is here at the Art Union rooms. The first impression to me was disappointment and certainly the forms of many parts of the figure are objectionable, being rather those of the woman accustomed to wear our modern clothes & to pursue the present habits of life than the female form in its purity. These changes may have been necessary in order to destroy all ideas of sensuality but it may be carried too far & the plumpness of form give way to scrawniness. The back of the figure I think much superior to the front & all the views in that position are very fine. The expression and “feeling” of the whole figure with the exceptions I have noticed is remarkably delicate & refined. The bust of Judge [Jacob] Burnet is at the house of that gentleman where I saw the original & the bust. It is a remarkably fine head full of dignity and truthfulness. The utmost detail is developed without destroying the masses or expression. Every form is beautifully made out & the effect of flesh and hair is admirable. It seems humanity turned to stone—& possesses none of the hardness usually seen in marble works. This is particularly remarkable in the modelling of the mouths of Power's statues which resemble more a cast from the life than a stone.
The Art Union Room & the Artists' Union rooms contain many creditable specimens of native as well a foreign talent. The artists of Cincinnati, & this city has been peculiarly prolific in men of this class 055 44are mostly the uneducated votaries of Art i.e so far as Academic instruction is concerned. The tendency of the school is good, self reliance & constant reference to nature, regardless, perhaps too much, of the great canons of art. 4 The painters are mostly landscape Artists and the beautiful country by which they are surrounded supplies them with ample material for study & subject. The most eminent in landscape is [William L.] Sonntag a native of Cincinnati & a social agreeable & modest gentleman. 5 He has travelled over the greater part of this country visiting all our finest scenery & has studied entirely in the school of nature. His landscapes are remarkably fine, distinct, characteristic & truthful. [Thomas W.] Whitridge, [Robert S.] Duncanson (a negro), also paint good landscape 6 the general defect of the artists here being a want of massiveness in the foregrounds & a hardness & harshness of drawing & colour. 4 An account of the development of the “Fine Arts” in Cincinnati appears in Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851, 119-123 (Cincinnati, 1851). The writer includes a long list of local artist, in which many of the artists mentioned by Mayer are noted. Cist describes the “Arts Union Hall” as a “fine saloon,” which “occupies the fourth story of the building at the corner of Sycamore and Fourth Streets; to which it has given its own name.” The hall seems to have been used chiefly for temporary exhibits. See also Foote, Schools of Cincinnati, 207-209. 5 Sonntag was born near Pittsburg in 1822, but he passed his youth in Cincinnati. An account of his career appears in Appleton's Cylopædia, 5:606. Mayer mentions him also, past, p. 203. 6 A sketch of Duncanson appears in Wendell P. Dabney, Cincinnati's Colored Citizens, 89-93 (Cincinnati, 1926) 056 45 [Joseph O.] Eaton paints a good head, and bids fair to excell. There are others here of lesser degrees of talent, but these stand highest. Sculpture is peculiary cherished in Cincinnati the nurse of Power, & [Shobald V.] Clevenger, who is inferior to him as far as I have seen. At the Art Union room I saw a fine landscape by [John F.] Kensett of N York & a good hunting scene by [William S.] Ranney of N Y. There is also an exquisite head by professor Shroeder of Dusseldorf which is a model for our artists as regards effect, drawing, &l all the technical parts of the art. It is a female head & bust, & hand, very beautiful—highly finished yet broad & transparent.
Cincinnati is one of the most beautiful and attractive cities I have yet seen, situated on a generally rising plain & surrounded on three sides by hills, the fourth bounded by the river which here takes a simicircular curve. The hill to the east commands a fine view of the town & surrounding country & is the site of the Observatory where an astronomer is stationed to make observations &c. 7 The city is regularly laid out and its architectural adornments are in excelent taste. The materials used being mostly a species of free stone of a light drab colour. They do not posses the white marble or beautifu[l] bricks of Baltimore but their buildings evince private taste & a pervading 7 For an account of the Cincinnati Observatory, see Cist, Cincinnati in 1851, 3410346. The corner stone of the observatory was laid in 1843 by John Quincy Adams. 057 46 public spirit. The Burnet house is a magnificent hotel of Palladian architectur—adorned with the finest mirrors, gilding, marble pavements & finest furniture. 8 Tho the accommodations are excellent I should have preferred for comfort the less ostentatious “Inn.” Prosperity an progress are every where evident & the long line of steam boat & piles of merchandise on the levee, the bustle of passing crowds, the whizz & whirr of factories & the elegant stores, bank building & public halls give token of a brilliant future to the Queen city of the West.
8 A picture of the Burnet House forms the frontispiece of Cist, Cincinnati in 1851.
[Cincinnati besides the extensive business connections with the surrounding country is one of the greatest pork markets in the world. There are numerous factories & Steam Engines constantly at work. The cultivation of the vine is carried on successfully on the shores of the Ohio above & below Cincinatti, especially at Vevay.] 9
9 The paragraph inclosed in bracket is written at the top of a left-hand page facing Mayer's final comments about his visit to Cincinnati.
To W m F. Coale & Mr [John L] Ste[ttinius], grandson of M r Longworth I am indebted for kindnesses. 10 Altho' not very intimate with Mr & Miss Dale of Baltimore I met them with great pleasure accidentally at the hotel. In the midst of strangers & 10 John Longworth Stettinius was the son of Nicholas Longworth's daughter Mary and John Stettinius. C. F. Gross, Cincinnati, The Queen City, 4:612-615 (Cincinnati, 1912). 058
Dragoons, Fort Snelling
059
Dragoon Equipment, Fort Snelling
060 49 a strange city one grasps the hand of a fellow citizen with peculiar tenascity.
May 14. Left Cincinnati on the Ben Franklin, a “crack boat,”—& arrived in Louisville by 10½ but remained on board until the morning. 11 Old gentleman of a stage-coach notoriety turned up again, the old man is evidently filled with the milk of human kindness, a diet which has possible impaired the sterner qualities of his mind—for he firmly believes the young ladies to be very respectable women. He still had the sense to discontinue the acquaintance on board the steamer. He ha wealth & uses it well. Plenty of time & money he desire to take a tour to the west, but as his wife dreaded the dangers of Western waters he has taken the clergyman with him & pays all his expenses. He kindly assisted a poor man on the boat & gave him his own great-coat “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” A weakness of intellect is amply compensated by his kindness of heart. He has taken a fancy to me & introduced me to M r W. Cave Johnson, formerly a distinguished politician & Postmaster general under Polk's administra[tion] 12 He is a tall venerable looking man with flaxen hair & 11 The “Benj. Franklin” was built at Cincinnati in 1848. James T. Lloyd, Lloyd's Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters, 269 (Cincinnati 1856). 12 For an account of Johnson's career, see Joshua W. Caldwell, Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Tennessee, 187-190 (Knoxville, 1898). 061 50 thin visage marked by line of anxiety & care, tho' his eye gives evidence of the undying flame of talent.
Conversed with an Irishman, walked the deck by one of the loveliest moons I ever beheld with an Englishman who has been making a tour from Canada thro' the country a man of some information & neat but a little ah-a-a ingleesh & concieted—tho' rather more liberal to this country than I had anticipated. As I retired a “Cannie Scot” demanded a share of my stateroom which I could not refuse, & found him honest.
The scenery for some miles below Cincinnati is of a gently undulating character the hills on either side being less bold than above, but as we got below Vevay the river widens & the hills acquire a more massive & extended form, richly wooded to the waters edge with a thick umbrageou & uniform vegetation. The atmosphere was perfectly clear & the glassy surface of the water reflected with perfect distinctness the forms of the embracing mountains, the setting sun throw[ing] the whole scene into deep transparent masses of mellow light & shade. The day retired & the rival moon rose to contest the palm for beauteous limning of the landscape grand & to which the prize is due I know not so beautiful were both yet each so different. The moon rose full & the transparent atmosphere & unrippled river furnished a suitable theatre for the exhibition of her silvery magic. Here & there a light in some Cabin ashore, or the fire on 062 51a raft or flat boat was reflected in the water, giving variety to the scene, or the ponderous mass of a steamboat come slowly onward th[r]o' the uncertain light, enveloped in portending cloud of smoke & steam, emblem of power, moving majestically thro the quiet water, regardless of current, wind or weather. The occasional shout or son of the boatmen were the only evidences of any animated presence than our own—the vast forest spreading over hill & vall[e]y to water edge & mountain top, & not a habitation seen of man of homan kind. The deep shadows & distinctness of the scene seemed to taunt the human with his own shallowness & to tempt him to & lose him in the depth of thought begot of peering into caverns of unfathomable shade—the light like liquid silver was evanescent, flitting on the surface of the water & the moon alone above seemed steady in its gaze as it looked with seeming smile on the maze, in which its beauty had beguiled our flippant fancy's.
As we passed down the river we beheld the quiet resting place of the truly good President Harrison. North Bend at the mouth of the Miami River is the seat of his family & his remains rest on a knoll which [is] visible many miles up & down the river an object of solemn suggestion.
063 52

[mdenney]

III The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky
Louisville May 15 th 1851. In company with Mr Hall of Washington & the Hon. W. Cave Johnston [ sic ] of Tennessee put up at the Galt house where I met Col l [Joseph P.] Taylor of Balt e the late President's brother. The comparison between Louisville & Cincinnati is by no means flattering to the slave city. One notices the absence of that activity & neatness which distinguishes the former. That look of thrift & healthy progress is replaced by a sluggishness of public enterprise & a subjection of the senses, inseperable, I fear from slave labour. Here I first perceived myself in a more southern land than my native state. The physiognomy & costume assumes a more generous & liberal aspect. The sharp feautures & energetic eye & motion of the northerner & bluntness and his business-like manner are excha[n]ged with lighter clothing for the easy contentment of manner & expression & more open social feeling of the southerner. One still bears the marks of his puritan origin while the cavalier still glimmers thro' the southern planter's exterior. This 064 53ease of manner & hospitality thro' [ though ] traits greatly to be admired and imitated do not compensate for the want of public energy & enterprise which is so nobly exhibited in the sister city of Cincinnati.
On the morning of the 16 th Left Louisville in the stage for the Mammoth cave—a distance to Bell's where we stopped that night of 95 miles. 1 The road at first lies thro' the most beautiful natural parks the trees in which are beech maple, & Tulip poplar chiefly, of great size and covered with the thickest & most luxuriant foliage, possessing a richness of form of colour which speaks a most fertile soil & healthy growth. The underbrush seems to have been entirely displaced by the fathers of the forest & the green sward seems as tho' tended by a careful gardener. The surface for some miles is level much of the road following the course of the Ohio river & as it meanders along its banks affording beautiful views of that majestic stream. At salt river a stream somewhat noted in our political annals as giving origin to the term “rowed up salt river,” 2 we took the ferry & crossing 1 It was customary for tourists who planned to visit the Mammoth Cave to spend a night at a tavern kept by Robert S. Bell, who was famous for his hospitality, his excellent table, and a drink known as “peach and honey.” Horace Martin, Pictorial Guide to the Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, 16 (New York, 1851); Franklin Gorin, Times of Long Ago (Barren County, Kentucky), 63 (Louisville, 1929); Kentucky taxlists, cited in a letter of Nina M. Visscher of the Kentucky State Historical Society, May 26, 1931. 2 Salt River, according to Webster, is “an imaginary river up which defeated political parties or candidates are supposed to be sent to oblivion.” 065 54 passed thro' a gorge of the mountains highly picturesque Rocky & well wooded, with a beatiful spring on the road side which drops from ledge to ledge of the rocks in a silvery cascade. After this & until reaching Bell's our destination by stage route the country is sterile & uninteresting, probably the least fertile portion of Kentucky.
The pleasures of the morning ride were much heightened by intercourse with the driver a good specimen of a race rapidly diminishing, the American stage driver, a person entirely distinct from the English individual of that title. In the presence [ present ] instance he was tall & well proportioned, a large frame muscular & enured to hardship, with little of the encumbrance to agility called fat, his feautures are decidedly acquiline the mouth compressed with determination & the eye bright. Complexion sun-burnt, the slouched felt scarely screening his face from the sun's scorching rays. In fact he would be an admirable model for the pioneer of our backwoods representing a physiognomy peculiarly American. Affable & polite there was nothing servile in his manner but you felt that he was to be treated with proper respect, & that he considered himself politically at least your equal. None of that cruelty to his horses was exhibited which too often disgusts us in others of his class. My fellow travellers were a young Kentuckian named Richison & an old negro who was going home at his ease, stopping to visit his friends 066 55at the roadside plantations. He was a member of one of those patriarchal establishments only found in our southern country. I understood from the driver that he was the old friend & constant adviser of his master who consulted him on all occasions with regard to the disposition of their affairs. He was looked up to with evident veneration by all the younger darkies he met & to whom he never fail'd to address some gossip for he seemed universal[ly] known & regarded.
Arrived at Bell's an eccentric old landlord who treated us in a generous manner tho' his announcements were given rather a voice of command than invitation. He is a veteran of 74 & has never been a day absent from his present residence for years. He is a man of good sense, some humour & a disposition to accumulate, the first of which qualities united to his venerable years have rendered “old man Bell” an oracle. With a gruff kind of command he invited [me] to take some of his peach-brandy for which he is famous & I bear witness to the excellence of the preparation as well as to the admirable supper which followed, for this is a land literally flowing in milk & honey, venison of tenderest quality & other delicacies of the wilderness graced the board to which we were ordered in the same style as to the brandy. After supper the boy was called to take my trunk & a candle a hint which I understood t me[an] “go to bed,[”] & acted therein.
067 56
In the morning a negro drove me to the Mamoth cave hotel & soon after being provided with a guide I proceeded to visit that great natural curiosity. 3 Proceeding a few hundred yards down a richly wooded ravine you arrive at a large cavity in the hill side from which so cold a draught of air issues that the change startled you by it suddeness & seeking the cause you perceive that the yawning mouth of the cavern is before you. descending several steps & following rapidly the footsteps of the guide you are past the current of air & find yourself in perfect stillness within the cave. For some distance the harmony of the scene is destroyed by the present [ presence ] of the remains of salt-petre works formerly used during the war of 1812, great quantities of this article being extracted from the dirt of the cave.

[mdenney]

4
3 Bell's tavern was located nine miles from the cave. See Martin, Mammoth Cave, 17. A picture of the hotel at the cave forms the frontispiece of this volume. 4 The remains were still to be seen in the cave in 1901. Early in the nineteenth century it was found that the cave abounded in “nitrous earth,” and from this was extracted saltpeter. The cave was privately owned at the time, and during the War of 1812 its owners “made a fortune” from it. An account of the method of mining the saltpeter and an estimate of its importance to the United States during the war appear in Horace C. Hovey and Richard E. Call, Mammoth Cave of Kentucky: An Illustrated Manual, 11 (Louisville, 1901). See also Martin, Mammoth Cave. 20.
Beyond this the subterranean scenery begins & it is probably unequally [ unequaled ] by any other example known. An immense cavern fifty to sixty feet in 068
A Red River Cart
069
Winter Dress of a Red River Half-breed
070 59 width & often more in height extends for four miles from the entrance, & constitutes the main cave. Here perfect stillness reigns & awful silence, never broken but by the hasty flight of some solitary bat & that only near the entrance. Impenetrable darkness fills every cavity & our lamps rather hint that [ than ] fully reveal the immense masses of jagged, & riven rocks strewned upon the bed of the cave apparently tossed & torn by some tumultous torrent. Rising from this confusion wild the ledges of rocks tower above one another in grand masses to the ceiling or roof which is nearly flat & appears as tho' laid over this chasm chaotic by some cunning architect—beyond is impenetrable darkness and all around are scattered the enormous fragments casting shadows of alarming form & magnitude It seems a fit residence for gigantic spirits & but little imagination is required to believe their presence, for the form of an immense rock has given it the name of the giant's coffin.
Passing two houses of stone which had been erected for the residence of consumptive invalids who for the sake of a restoration to health were willing to become denizens of this dismal abode for some months, the atmosphere having at one period been supposed beneficial to patients of that class, 5 you arrive at the “Star chamber” a portion of the main cave which has been thus named from the circumstance of certain 5 Some remarks on the supposedly pure and healthful atmosphere of the cave are quoted by Martin, Mammoth Cave, 39-41. 071 60 crystals or white substances reflected from the midst of the dark mass of the roof giving the idea of a starry sky, the deception is remarkable. Beyond the cave increases in rugged & apalling grandness passing th[r]o' many scenes of great picturesqueness. One of these is the cascade hall where a stream dropps from the ceiling a hundred feet to the floor beneath, & the grand temple an immense rotunda near the termination of this portion of the cave. Numerous avenues branch from this one to great distances the greatest distance from the entrance to the extreme end being about 9 miles. These are of lesser size than the first & seem to bear greater evidence of the action of water than other portions. Numerous pits, domes & stalactite & stalagmite formations are found & the general direction is a descent until you reach the “river,” a stream some thirty feet wide & often as deep running as the poet says “thro' caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea”. This region partakes more of the horrible, dismal & dreary & suggest the memory of the unhallow[e]d journey of Dante & Virgil, it is a fit place for the wandering & wearied d**ned & realizes our ideas of Pluto's realms.
One branch of the river is aptly named the Styx, the other Echo river. On this you embark, the guide acting as oarman Seldom do you encounter such a situation. In a small flat-boat steered by a guide who by the dim light might easily be imagined 072 61an uneasy spirit of the place, the still quiet stream cloudily revealing the sharp angles & points of treacherous rocks lurking just beneath the surface, the low arched roof with the sides rising perpendicularly from the river robbing the drowning wretch of even the sight of a shore on which a hand-hold could be found— &the wild song of the guide dying away in echo[e]s which give the effect of an organ accompaniament of some unseen hand— & you have a scene where you feel yourself doubtful of your waking existence. At one point of the passge and for a space of thirty yards I was obliged to compress myself to the smallest compass in order to pass under the superincumbent rock. Had the river risen, as it has been known to do, before our return or situation would have been truly awful for our chances of escape would have [been] resting on finding a passage thro' Purgatory[,] a dangerous & intricate ravine where the water does not rise as rapidly as in the river.
On landing you find yourself in the “Infernal” regions & they are well named for a place of greater dreariness & utter absence of all that can serve to occupy the mind or offer repose to the body I cannot imagine. An irregularly arched way with an uneven & tortuous bed, composed of rock seemingly formed of mud of the most fetid colour, not offering even the gratification of an angle to the eye for all the forms are rounded into one another in ungraceful 073 62curves the floor being of so uneasy a surface as to suggest no idea of repose but rather to cause that species of progression seen in landsman on a pitching ship, then all is damp, dreary, desolate, & the mind is irresistably turned upon itself—a fitting spot for the torments of conscience to be administered. Two other places are suited to Dante's ideas of punishment—here is the “Winding way” “or fat-man's-misery” a path which was once the bed of a torrent of about a foot in width & waist deep, here the gluttons might be compelled to walk for ever & until reduced in flesh. After this is the “valley of humility” where the proud must stop double. From the infernal regions you walk three miles thro' an arched & tortuous rocky avenue over pointed & brocken rock to the “snow ball room” where the crystalization of gypsum on the ceiling give it the effect of an incrustation of snowballs. Gypsum formations are only found beyond the river the first portion of the cave being of darker limestone.
No living creatures are found within this subterranean world except a few bats who seek shelter in the mouth of the cave during winter, & species of rats who frequent the main cave & who as well as the fish found in the river are of a lighter colour than their brothers of the daylight world. The fish found in the river are small, colourless & without eyes. 6 6 For a discussion of the flora and fauna of the cave, see Hovey and Call, Mammoth Cave, 100-107. 074 63 There are a few spiders & crawfish of a like unhealthy hue.
I returned from my tour of the cave, having been absent 8 hours & having walked about 18 miles, the effect of so much exercise being much less fatiguing than then same amount above ground, owing probably to the equable & agreeable temperature all parts of the cave at all seasons being about 60° of Fahrenheit.
Another cave in the vicinity, (“Whites cave”) contains more of the stalactite & stalagmite formulation—which in its forms suggests many useful ideas of forms & ornaments to the architect. The stone is not brilliant except when broken when the crystalization is apparent. The whole of this region is limestone & contains many similar caves of smaller size. The only remains found in the Mammonth Cave were the bones of some gigantic human being & some of the bones of a mammonth & a wooden bowl found by an early explorer near a spring supposed to be of Indian manufacture. The mummies said to have been found have were discovered in a cave some three or four miles distant (Long's). 7
7 According to Hovey and Call the story that mummies were found in Mammoth Cave had its origin in the fact that a mummy found in a neighboring cave was exhibited in Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave, 28.
075 64
IV By Stage and Boat to St. Louis
May 19. Left the cave for Bell's & at 12 oclock found myself in the stage for Nashville in company with an old gentleman, of evident gastronomic taste. The country, which I first saw the next morning, resembles a prairie tho' of less extent & varied with clumps of trees & well cultivated farms. The road is a fine one & we travelled rapidly notwithstanding the rain which fell in torrents until noon. Until arriving within about twenty five miles of Nashville the scenery is uninteresting. At this point we descend from a ridge of hills and enter a most beautifully undulating country covered with farms & plantations in the highest state of cultivation the neat airy white & stone coloured dwelling embedded in the beautiful natural parks which I had seen first in Kentucky but which here exist, if anything, in greater luxuriance. The houses partake of the cottage style two stories high covering a large space & surrounded by porches which protect them from the sultry heat of summer. Every thing here wears a more southern aspect, the sultry heat, 076 65the Luxuriant & various foliage, the sprouting cotton plants, the cool costumes & the negro[e]s all bespeak an approach to the tropics. The trees mostly found here are the beech, sugar maple sycamore, buckeye, walnut, tulip poplar, Elm, & the usual varieties of oak, these are often covered with the most graceful festoons of grape vines & other running plants & the May apple grows in large patches beneath their shade, in the midst of blue grass & other grasses of nutritious character. Looking into the cool shade beneath these groves the light is seen in the distance falling here & there on the emerald carpet & presenting an enticing variety of effect. My companions during the day were increased by the addition of a “Kaintuck hauss trader” a giant of gaunt & bony frame with cunning eyes & rich firm mouth, & a farmer of thin nervous aspect who advocated slave labour & “wasn't to be put down, no whar!” Ar, bar whar, har thar &c. are the pronunciation of air, bear, hair, &c—& the observation “War gwine quite peert[,]” fast, lively[,] has been addressed to me more than once.
Nashville is beautifully situated in the midst of a fertile country & on the banks of the Cumberland river. It stands on a rock of limestone the soil being about 3 to 5 feet deep. It is regularly built & most of the houses have gardens attached. Many of the private residences of handsome specimens of domestic architectures & the public are many of them elegant 077 66the new state house now building after the design of W. Strickland being a tasteful & correct piece of architecture of white limestone & when completed will cost near a million of dollars.
At Mr. F's I spent the evening enjoying the domestic comedy in which Mrs. F & her daughter enacted the principal characters. Mrs. F is a lady of sixty who apparently desires to make herself excessively agreeable & supposes herself to posses “great conversational powers” & to be highly “intellectual & perfectly au fait in all the maneuvers & [black in MS.] of fashionable life having been frequently to Washington & looking forward to seeing her husband a political “Magnifico”. She wears a turban & displays a great extent of forehead, or rather “frontal integument” from either side of which depends two rusty coloured curls of some length, a scarf thrown over a rather low silk dress which hangs on a thin & “jerky” figure of commanding height with a large fan twirled by three fingers & a pair of net-mits complete the external. On entering, the lady makes an antediluvian courtesy & throws herself into a chair in a neglige[nt] tho' studied attitude, one foot being thrust slightly forward, the other withdrawn and the arms “contracted”, having “posed” a benignant smile graces the lower portion of her face & an intellectual spark is forced from her eyes. Her conversation is prodigiously animated a running fire of sentiment, the last review & Bolmar's French phrases, 078 67her temperament she expects you to find poetic, but is evidently the study of elegant extracts, U. S. speaker, & the most approved topics of fashionable life. Expression is applied by means of peculiar motion of the foot & fan & the cheeks are thrown “in & out of gear” with wonde[r]ful facility, the same worn-smile being reproduced thereby. She absorps the conversation, indeed “she considers it her duty” to entertain the company, poor Mr. F says nothing but sits as an “acessory” in the background & plays with the children. Miss F the young lady of—years is an evident pupil of her Ma to whom she looks with admiration & sympathises by look & foot motion, their fans match & they use them accordingly. I bid farewell, giving Mother & daughter “searoom” for their genuflexious which corresponded precisely & retired with Mr. F to the door who directed me to my hotel.
In riding to Nashville I saw a woman & child nearly exactly in the position of Raphaels “Madonna della sedulla”—sitting at a cottage door— also a rattle snake on the road side. The Cumberland river winds between high cliffs of limestone, crowned with Forests, which generally extend to the river's edge & are reflected with great distinctness in the clear water, especially at sunset hours. It is a beautiful stream tho' small & difficult to navigate on account of rocks & “snags”.
May 23rd Arrived at Peducah a small tho' thriving 079 68town below the confluence of the Cumberland & Ohio rivers. The steamer from Louisville on which I wish to embark for St Louis did not arrive until dusk, & I thus lost sight of the scenery of the Ohio from Louisville to “the mouth” with the exception of the small distance from the mouth of the Cumberland Peducah. The Ohio is here very wide, generally not less than a mile, the banks much lower than above Louisville & thickly timbered. Altho' lacking the picturesque variety of its mountain course above Cincinnati, it is yet here a magnificent stream, elegant & feminine—broad deep, & clear bounded by a country rich in useful products.
An old gentleman named “Bell” of Tennassee was my companion on board the Lady Franklin &was a very clever, sturdy Western & southern specimen. 1 I supposed him to be my only acquaintance aboard the “Lady Franklin” the Louisville steamer, but with my usual luck, I had not been long in the crowded Cabin before a gentleman next me, asked if I was not from Baltimore, he seemed to know me having seen me there &at Louisville, tho' he was unknown to me. I found him to be a Mr. Makorl a travelling agent of Duvall Keighler & Co of Baltimore on his way to the trading towns on the Missouri river & 1 The “Lady Franklin” was side-wheeler, built at Wheeling in 1850. In the summer of 1851 it was first used in the upper Mississippi River trade, and it was continued in this service until 1856, when it sank. George B. Merrick, Old Times on the Upper Mississippi, 278 (Cleveland, 1909). 080 69 he proved an agreeable & gentlemanly companion. 2 I soon made other acquaintances from whom I derive information & pleasure & I[n] travelling this is as essential to one's profit as the observation of the country.
2 The firm of Duvall, Keighler, and Dorsey, “agents domestic cotton and wholesale goods,” is listed in the Baltimore directory for 1851.
This boat presented more the picture which I had imagined of a Western steamboat than any I had seen, the great number of passengers & the mixture of character to be seen all peculiar to this region & nation. There is nothing which has attracted my attention so much as the fine physical development of these men of the West, the majority six-feet in height & often over, but generally well proportioned[ed], robust, stalwart, & hardy. It is probable that nowhere could so fine a body of energetic active men, be found prepared to face any danger & accomplish any work of enterprise. Altho' giving the palm to the male sex in the West for physical development, I must still claim for the fair & graceful daughters of Maryland & Virginia the superiority in feminine attractions to their Western sisters.
One of the causes of disease & most trying vicissitudes to health in this region are the rapid changes of temperature. A day ago I was sweltering in the heat of the south & now it is cold enough for all the winter clothes I can muster. The “father of waters” 081 70hails me with an attendant Eolus. On awaking this morning I found myself upon his busom ploughing our way in defiance of a chilly [“]north-wester”. I was made certain of my locality by an old & bony character declaring “we had gone right peert in the night & were a goin up the Massesseppi”. The river here & until you reach it's confluen[ce] with the Missouri, which many consider the parent stream, is wide turbid, & filled with uncertain currents, sweeping down ward with gigantic power sweeping all obstructions from its course, & cutting away the banks on either side while it adds to them upon the other, raising treacherous sandbars in a day & destroying an island which it reforms fifty miles below. The banks are low of dark earth originally the sediment of the river, & are being continually removed or replaced by the changing course of the stream, the land on either side is flat extended some distance back to low ranges of hills called “bluffs”—and covered with a thick growth of wood. It has not the beauty of the Ohio, but possesses a heedless grandeur & power unknown to the former, the signification of whose name is “the beautiful river”.
At 4 o'clock on the morning of the 23 rd of May we arrived in St Louis & I took lodgings by the advice of M r Bell at the “American” which I found an excellent house, affording more comfort than the more expensive hotels of fashionable celebrity. S t Louis is a city of rapidly increasing importance, it is 082
Trader's Cabin, Traverse des Sioux
083

[mdenney]

A Room in the Trader's Cabin, Traverse des Sioux
084 73 strictly a commercial city commanding the great produce trade of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin & Missouri. It receive produce from these states & ships it to N. Orleans. It also supplies the Missouri & the neighboring states with goods of all sorts—& it is on the road to the improving regions of the “farwest”. All these advantages combine to make it a place of great trade. The effect of its peculiar condition is eviden[t] in the appearance of the city and its inhabitants who all wear the anxious & care worn looks of “men of business” not unmixed, I regret to say, with that reckless, & irreligious spirit which seems induced by the easy acquirement of the means of support & the selfish, heedless pursuit of wealth.
The city has the appearance of a place in the progress of erection, nothing appears complete, or settled by age, the streets partly paved, houses being built, sewers dug & crowds of busy anxious faces hurrying to & fro. So rapid & vast hast been the increase of the population [of] this city, that time had not been sufficient to keep up with the demands for its extension. 3 The old or French portion of the town is closely built or rather rebuilt since the great fire of 1849, which destroyed almost the entire business portion of the town. 4 This extends along the river 3 Between 1840 and 1850 the population of St. Louis increased from 16,469 to 77,860. 4 For a vivid description of the fire of 1849, especially along the St. Louis water front, see Hiram M. Chittenden, Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River, 185-187 (New York, 1903). 085 74 which runs at the foot of a wide “levee” which affords landings for at least 100 steamboats nearly that number being always moored to the bank, taking in & discharging freight, letting off steam, & pushing out or arriving. This collection of steamers brings together an immense concourse of drays, carts, wagons & every variety of pedestrians & freight. There is probably no busier scene in America in the same space. For two miles a forrest of smoke stacks is seen towering above the “arks” from which they seem to grow. 5 All between this and the line of warehouses is filled with a dense mass of apparently inextricable confusion & bustle, noise & animation. more steamboats are probably seen here than at any port in the world, they being, the only means of transportation to & from this place; but ‘ere long the Railroads are destined to diminish their monopoly. 6
5 A crude drawing of the St. Louis levee is in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40:26. 6 The rise and decline of the St. Louis steamboat traffic are the subject of a chapter in Walter B. Stevens, St. Louis: The Fourth City, 1764-1911, 1:255-280 (St. Louis, 1911). The city's first railroad began operations on December 1, 1852.
One might find material for study of the human mind within this space to occupy him for some time. The “decks” of the steamers alone are a world in themselves, the emigrants, the boatmen, & the variety of travelers of the labouring class which teem on these Western waters are there seen in every position & occupation. The upper & new portion of the 086 75city is regularly laid out, with broad streets & the public buildings & private residences are many of them in very good taste.
*(Of the Western states Illinois probably offers as great inducements to the agriculturists as any, as large a proportion of the land is arable & it affords crops of grain & corn of great yield. It's surface is gently undulated and is the first state where the prairies are found. Ohio produces grain, corn, and fruit & manufactures extensively, Indiana & Illinois grain & corn—Kentucky, ditto Tobacco & hemp, Tennessee grain & cotton & Tobacco. “Hog & hominy” abound in Ohio, Indiana & Illinois. Kentucky raises mules & Tennessee grows more corn than any of the states & raises large herds of cattle.)
Called in S t Louis on D r Hoffman & Mr Cassen, & was kindly treated by D r Saunders. 7
7 William H. Suanders, M.D., and J.A. Kasson, attorney, are listed in the St. Louis directory for 1851.
087 76
V On the Missouri Frontier
May 25 th Left S t Louis in the steamer Diana Vernon for Tully but on arriving at Hannibal discovered that the river had risen to an unprecedented height having overflowed its banks & spreading over the praries & bottom lands had in some places swelled to fifteen miles in width where it usually is but one. I was therefore obliged to land at “La-grange”[,] Tully & the adjoining towns of Alexandria & Canton being completely surrounded with water & the houses mostly rendered uninhabitable, all means of egress to the surrounding country except by means of “skiffs” being destroyed. 1 After passing the mouth of the Missouri the Mississippi becomes clearer, & the shores higher presenting a stream winding thro' well wooded bluffs & flats and 1 Tully was a Mississippi River port of some importance adjoining Canton on the north and located about nine miles north of Lagrange in Lewis County, Missouri. The “memorable high waters of 1851 almost totally destroyed” Tully, and it is now one of Missouri's “obsolete towns.” History of Lewis, Clark, Knox and Scotland Counties, Missouri, 224 (St. Louis, 1887); Samuel Cummings, The Western Pilot, 144 (Cincinnati, 1849). 088 77 studded with numerous islands—& its romantic character increases from this point to its rise in the lake.
At Tully & Kentuckian alias a Western-Yankee conveyed me thro' no very agreeable roads to Byrneham Wood the residence of my aunt Mrs. Flora Byrne. 2 There are few regions better adapted to farming & the enjoyments of “country life” than this portion of Missouri. A wide bottom or prarie studded here and there, tho' sparsely, with clumps of trees extends some miles back to a range of bluffs, or rather to a table land which continues with few interruptions to the rocky Mountains. The bluffs between the bottom & the upland praries is well timbered & the underwood is as yet sufficently low to admit the passage in any direction with ease of a horseman. Beyond this the praries begin increasing in flatness & extend until they reach the Rocky mountains. The timber is of large size & the foliage rich, black-walnut sycamore attaining a great size, cotton wood, maple (sugar) & the usual varieties of oak also abound. The praries are as yet covered here & there only with clump & thickets which have grown up since the settlement of the country, the Indian custom of burning the praries having formerly destroyed all the young trees.
2 A pictorial record of Mayer's visit to Byrneham Wood is to be found in his Sketchbooks, 40:1-21, 39, 40.
I was much gratified to meet my aunt who I had not seen since she left Baltimore her former residence 089 78& native city. Her farm is at the foot of the bluff & comma[nds] view of the praries which extends to the river six miles distant. This is now covered to within a mile of the house by the river & presents the apearance of a lake studded with Islands. This prarie is five miles wide & extends along the bank of the river for seven miles. A grove formed chiefly of that most graceful tree, the American Elm is not far from the house & the full extent of the prarie is seen here & there thro' the arborial arches.
This county (Clarke) was the favourite hunting ground of Black-hawk and his braves & the trees of the Elm-grove still retain in their bark the marks left by the various parties who had encamped beneath their shade but twenty five years ago. 3 Now the country is comparatively well settled chiefly by Kentuckians & Virginians. The former are a hardy pioneer race but lamentably deficient in education & the desire to procure it. Their ignorance gives rise to many amusing incidents—all of which furnish a field of observation to my aunt Flora. Their nearest neighbor is an old Kentuckian of the Name of Lucas who with his family reside in the former “Quarters.” 4 He is fine specimen of the backwoodsman 3 Some information about the activities of Black Hawk in Clark County, which is in the extreme northeast corner of Missouri, and about the effect of the Black Hawk war of 1832 in that vicinity is to be found in the History of Lewis, Clark, Knox and Scotland Counties, 254-248. 4 Sketches of Lucas appear in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40:19, 21. 090 79 & realizes Cooper's idea of “Letherstocking” He is tall, over six feet, & square built & broad giving evidence of great strength & powers of endurance, his face is founded on a classic construction (tho' rather shorter in the nose than the standard) & tho' bearing the marks of fatigue, endurance, & exposure, an expression of great delicacy & even refinement is evident—great decision & perfect good humor in the mouth & the clear piercing eye of the hunter looks out from its corrugated cavern beneath his shaggy brows. He is erect as an arrow & his motions have yet the freedom of alertness of the wary woodsman, altho' his ringlets are greyed by sixty winters. Honesty & kindness, bravery and determination characterise him. His daughters are even less educated than himself, being ignorant of 091 80even reading & writing yet of naturally intelligent & active minds, one of them possesses the most perfectly Grecian face I have ever seen, the construction & form of the head being exactly similar to some of the antique heads of the Muses, tho' lacking the intellectual expression requisite to those characters. These girls exhibit none of the bashfulness one might expect tho' modest in the demeanor, this is to be referred to the independent & republican ideas engendered from their infancy. They consider themselves “as good as anybody”, to use their own expression. They consider that their ancestors got along very well without education & they think that they may do the same. It is a pity indeed that a people of so many natural good qualities should be so dead to their intellectual progress. They are Roman Catholics.
The day after my arrival Ed. Fu[r]ness & Kelly being obliged to go some miles into the back country, they invited me to accompany them, the probability of seeing a deer hunt being an inducement. As we cantered along thro' the wild woodlands, Kelly, that embodiment of Irish heart & humor, entertained us with the “window Malone” & other choice Irish lyrics which he sang with a clear voice & native expression. 5 The dogs accompanied us & we met with no other than false alarms produced by the scent of some innocent rabbit when we reached a Smithy where a 5 A portrait of Kelly appears in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40:3. 092 81 noted hunter proposed to add his hounds to the pack & having stationed my friends at points where the deer were likely to pass I accompanied in on a “drive” as it is termed. We had searched hill & dale for & the horn had sounded often to withdraw the pack from “false scents” and our patience & hopes were nearly exhausted, when from a thicket near by a deer with tail & head erect leaped, in fear & uncertainty from its concealment, & instantly, ho! Juno! Tully! Boxer! & the hounds were in full cry we followed at full speed & I instantly lost all fear of ditches & d**es in the excitement of the chase. The sharp crack of a rifle told of the huntsman's alertness, but it failed to hit its mark & merely turned the course of the animals so that my friends lost their venison. We rode for sometime & followed the chorus of the hounds until we lost them in the distance, the deer having chosen an unusual course. A day after he was found, some ten miles distant where the dogs had killed it. The chase has its charms, but I dislike to see the poor creatures wantonly murdered.
A large mocassin snake paid with his life the penalty of intruding himself on our presen[ce] as we were about to seat ourselves on his residence an old log. The rattlesnakes have nearly disappeared from this country, but the mocassin who are nearly as poisonous, & more dangerous as they give no warning, still remain. There are other snakes but the most singular 093 82is the jointed snake which when struck seperated into options which seem to have been united by a kind of ball & socket joint. If the head which is attached to a portion is not killed it will return & unite the other portions to itself. They are generally about an inch in diameter & two to three feet long, & but rarely found. These facts I have from undoubted authority. 6
6 It is likely that the snake that Mayer saw was an ordinary water snake, a species that is frequently found in logs in Missouri. That region is the northern limit of the range of the water moccasin, which leaves the water but rarely and does not go into logs. Mayer seems to have accepted without question the story of the mythical jointed snake.
My stay in Missouri was rendered peculiarly agreeable by the kind attentions of my aunt & with her society & the many “studies” for my pencil which present themselves on all sides I could have passed a summer with ease, at Byrneham Wood. The numerous amusing anecdotes of western life which my aunt has related to me with the peculiar zest which she possesses I shall long laugh over. An old woman who had heard of the piano, desired to hear it played upon & on beholding the operation, remarked “Wall now, I guess our July An[n] might larn to do that, fur she's mighty handy with the knittin needles”. On being told of paper hangings she remarked “I guess ye hangs em up in winter & takes em down in the summer”. A young man who “did” the faces of the citizens with red & white earths on levenpenny 094 83calico seeing the portraits of my aunt & the Doctor, took one down & rapped it with all his might to discover the material & remarked that [he] thought calico “jest as good”, & when asked if he was going to Italy to study the old masters, he said, “ I dont no nothin bout the ole masters, Smith's my boss”. These are but specimens, their number is infinite. With all their ignorance, their hearts are most often in the right place and there are many who fill their sphere in the log cabin with greater honor & nobility than the titled denizen of a palace. I shall not soon forget “Old-man Lucas” and his interesting & beautiful daughters.

[mdenney]

June the 3 rd My aunt bid farewell to Byrnehamwood for some years that she may educate her daughter Annie, a sweet & charming girl of twelve, who has grown up, like the flowers of her native praries untainted by the pestilential air of city fashions & conventional life. 7 She is a child of nature & a “prarie bird” can managed a horse like a circus rider & find her way in any direction thro' the woods and praries Her mind is clear, & solid, free from the rubbish of crowded seminaries & her heart is alive to the least want of another—she'l make a woman, if she withstand these cities.
7 Some portraits of Annie Byrne are in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40:40.
Taking leave of Geo. Fletcher & Ned Furness who will find themselves lonely after this & bidding farewell 095 84well to Mr. Lucas' family we travelled over desperate roads or rather over the untracked praries for the whole day in hopes of reaching “La Grange” the nearest landing for steamboats, at present accessible from the back-country—but as we were toiling over an uneven & rutted prarie we were hailed by the honest voice of Fletcher, who without further “todoo” pulled down the fence & insisted in the name of Mr. Eagan, on our stopping the night under his roof. We were received with Virginia hospitality & witnessed a solemn sunset over the prarie— its vast extent being in deep shadow while the horizon was relieved against a blood red sky. The monotony of our journey had been broken by the “miring” of our horses in the muddy bank of a stream misnamed “Sugar creek.” Oxen loaned by the neighboring farmers dragged the carriage out after an hour's delay & we proceeded on our way. At breakfast the conversation turned on the subject of carrying arms, & I received a wrinkle from “old-man Lucas” who said that “he'd never carried anything but a few percussion caps in his waiscoat pocket & they answered every purpose” for when he got in “saasy” company he “jest tuk one or two from his pocket & began to play with them” & he found that the hinted presence of a pistol soon lulled the storm of his opponent.
In due season we arrived in St Louis again the time having been pleasantly beguiled on the boat by listening 096 85to the delightful songs of my aunt who accompanied herself on the guitar. My little cousin's wonder & delight on seeing the various novelties of the city was amusing indeed, for it was to her a new world who had never before (but for a day or so) seen any thing but the wild woods & praries & nothing in the shape of a town larger than the villages on the river.
097 86
VI Up the Mississippi to St. Paul
On the 8 th of June took passage & went abroad the Steamer “Excelsior” up for St Pauls & Fort-Snelling a distance of near eight hundred miles from St. Louis. 1 The boat was crowded with freight [sic] Emigrants & passengers. I found myself in a state-room with a Mr [Charles] Sexton, Editor of the St Croix Enquirer, Wisconsin, who proved a useful companion, & amusing “study”. 2 Thin as an anatomy his smile was ghastly & like a 1 The “Excelsior,” a side-wheeler of 172 tons, was built at Brownsville, Pennsylvania in 1849. It was used in the St. Louis and St. Paul trade in 1850, and in 1851 it was one of three boats to run on the Minnesota River. The treaty commissioners with their attendants and supplies were transported to Traverse des Sioux aboard the “Excelsior.” See post, p. 145. It was owned and commanded by Captain James Ward. The distance by river between St. Louis, according to the government survey of 1890, is 741 miles. Merrick, Old Times, 267, 298; Thomas Husghes, “History of Steamboating on the Minnesota river,” in Minnesota Historical Collection, 10:137, 158, 161. 2 Sexton's newspaper evidently had not been published during his absence from his Wisconsin home, for the Pioneer for July 24, 1851, includes the following comment: “St. Crorx Enquirer.— ... this interesting little sheet has been resuscitated, by C. Sexton, Esq., and comes to us considerably improved in appearance. Judging from its advertising columns, (and what surer way is there?) we should think that the business of Willowriver had trebled since last year.” The editor seems to have been Charles Sexton, who is listed in the manuscript census records of the town of Buena Vista, St. Croix County, Wisconsin, for 1850 as a printer thirty-two years of age, whose birthplace is Vermont. The census schedules are in the possession of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Buena Vista, now known as Hudson, was platted in 1848 at the junction of the Willow and St. Croix rivers. 098 87 grinning skull a sort of “melancholy joy,” & his complexion of so death-like a hue that I once was about to wake him to know if he was dead! an unavoidable bull, I confess. Yet this carcass of a man had been to the Rocky mountains & pierced the forests of Oregon until he had gazed on the Pacific & had returned again with two companions by a southern route through Utah & Nebraska to the states again. He was by birth a “Yankee” & formerly, I conjecture a printer, then a reporter, & now an Editor, a man of energy, thrift perseverance & intelligence & “good-hearted enough”.
A number of Prussian emigrants of the better class, with their beards[,] good figures & foreign costumes, a party of Irishmen, said to be “noble”, a certain officer of the army undoubtedly “royal” who amused us & astonished too by his wit & extensive information, merchants from S t Louis & the east, ratfsmen from the head waters of the Mississippi, farmers from Iowa & Wisconsin & in fact representatives of almost every state in the Union, with Canada & Europe were found in the cabin.
099 88
On Deck were Germans and Irish a filthy set, who[se] uncleanliness no doubt hastened the deaths which occurred among them & I was heartily glad when we landed the last at Dubuque. The first intimation
Burial of the Cholera Dead
I received of the presence of death in our midst was the tolling of the bell & the mooring of the boat at the foot of a high bluff on the Illinois shore, soon some hands jumped a shore[,] a grave was speedily dug & as the last rays of the setting sun glided from the waters face, a bird sent up a joyful note over the grave of the infant which an hour before had breathed its last. We proceeded on our way an[d] ‘ere two days more had passed we had buried five deck passengers[,] I fear some of them victims of choler no doubt aggravated or induced by filthiness, exposure, fatigue & improper diet. 3
3 A pen and ink sketch of the “Burial of the Cholera dead” is in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40:30. Choleraa was “very prevalent on the river” in 1850; there was a serious epidemic of the disease in Wisconsin in 1851 and 1852. Governor Alexander Ramsey, in his diary for June 11, 1851, notes that a steamboat arrived at St. Paul with “a few cases of cholera reported on board.” The unpublished Ramsey Diaries are in the possession of the governor's daughter, Mrs. Charles E. Furness of St. Paul; the Minnesota Historical Society has a copy. See also Merrick, Old Times, 274; Knut Gjerset and Ludvig Hektoen, “Health Conditions and the Practice of Medicine among the Early Norwegian Settlers,” in Norwegian-American Historical Association, Studies and Records, 1:18 (Minneapolis,1926). 100 89
At Keokuk we received on board M r C. Butler of New York who accompanied Miss [Anna C.] Lynch the authoress, whose acquaintance I made & with whom I led off a Virginia reel in the cabin to a good old fashioned fiddle. 4
4 Butler and Miss Lynch also are mentioned post, p. 203. Miss Lynch was a well-known writer of the middle nineteenth century. Before 1851 she had published a volume of poems and several prose works. In 1855 she married Vincenqo Botta, professor of Italian at the University of the City of New York. Appletons' Cyclopœdia, 1:325.
I shall recall with pleasure my fellow passengers on this trip. A Mr [George A.] Richmond of Boston, residing in S t Louis was a happy combination of the Eastern & western man & a gentleman who I hope to meet again. Tom Jackson, an open hearted, good natured Anglo-American, M r Schultz, the clerk of the boat an intelligent German—Mr. Sexton[,] Mr [Phineas] Banning of Phil a [,] Henry Thompson of Balt o [,] & my friend in the army “Old stokin” I shall not forget. 5
5 Mayer gives the addresses of Richmond and Banning, post, p. 203. The Colonel Bladen Dulany mentioned on the latter page probably was “Old stokin,” since a portrait in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40: 29, is labelled “Col. Dulany, U.S.M.C. ‘Old Stockin.’” 101 90
At Davenport & Rock Isla[n]d we enter upon a seemingly new character of country & climate, the bluffs begin to rise, first into grassy hills with clumps of trees her & there seemingly prepared by nature for the farmer, while on the opposite shoer a large forrest reaching back for miles a gently undulating country the Rapids of Rock Island run between for fifteen miles. Passing these the river becomes of a glassy smoothness & transparency & then [the] air has a peculiar clearness & bracing vigour which is unknown to lower latitudes. The bluffs on one or the other side rise to four & hundred feet clothed from summit to river brink with forests except where their vertical position affords no resting place for trees & the bare rocks are seen, like the ruins of old, cast[l]es guarding the entrance to this chosen haunt of nature. Ascending one of these bluffs, we found ourselves 400 feet above the river & beheld a magnificen[t] view of the river as it wended its way thro' the surrounding hills & praries now & then seeming to the have enclosed with in its arms some chosen spot of beauty, some Island for a fairy home. Large praries are some times on either side with the bluffs miles distant. Then the hills approch & seem to block up the entrance until in some unexpected direction the river again appears. The scenery is lonely & grand & the absence of all appearance 102 91of man's presence replaces that “sympathy” which cultivated scenery excites by a feeling of awe, so that we feel as intruders in this region which natures [ sic ] seems to have set apart as her own.
As we neared Lake pepin we first had intimation of our having passed thro' this long line of solitude & that we were emerging in a new region on one side civilization had advanced &the log cabin & neat frame of the New England settler looked over the river the Indian village where coucil smoke is still seen & the Scalp dance still celebrated, while the trading house & church are seen surrounded by Indians, half-breeds, French voyageurs, Americans & foreign emigrants&while birch bark canoes &peltries lie by the side of the steamboat & the last “Yankee notion”. 6
6 Probably this word picture describes the trading village of Wabasha as it appeared in 1851.
Arrived at S t Pauls June 15 th 1851. 7 As the sun was setting on the 14 th two indistinct forms were seen gliding close to the shore & as we approached them two canoes, one paddled by a frenchman, the other 7 The arrival of the “Excelsior” on “last Saturday morning” is announced in the Pioneer for June 19, 1851. As the publication day is a Thursday, this would mean that the boat arrived on June 14. The announcement continues: “She had a drove of cattle on board, to feed the Indians on, during the treaty. ... A barge was towed up by the Excelsior, which is to be left at Saint Paul and filled white sand to be taken to Saint Louis on the next trip of the boat down, to be there in manufacturing glass.” In the same issue of the Pioneer the “Excelsior” is advertised to leave St. Paul every alternate Friday for St. Louis. 103 92 by an Indian were revealed to us. By degrees in the morning more frequent became the intimations of savage presence We passed Kaposia or Little Crow's village 8 — & then the canoes & squaws, cheifs [ sic ] & papooses were frequent sights.
8 Little Crow was the hereditary chief of the Kaposia band of the Sioux or Dakota Indians. In 1851 his village was situated on the west bank of the Mississippi on part of the site of South Park, a suburb of the present city of South St. Paul. Warren Upham, Minnesota Geographic Names, 170, 443 (Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. 17).
S t Pauls is situated on a bluff probably about fifty feet above the surface of the river, commanding a fine view of the surrounding country & catching the breeze which sweep down the course of the river & over the adjacent hills. The plain which surmount the bluff is of ample extent for the erection of the proposed “city.” Two years ago it was little more than a mere trading post for the Indians—but already it assumes the appearance of a bustling New England village & well attests the presence of an energetic & free-soil population. It is singular to meet so few “old residenters” for no one seems to have passed more than one winter here.
Here an entirely different race are seen commingling with the Anglo-Saxon from those we see in the more southern portion of the West. The French were among the first settlers of this region. Here are the descendants of the “voyageurs” the companions of La Salle & Hennepin & they still retain 104
Michel Renville
105

[mdenney]

Henry Belland, Voyageur Hoosanere, or Grey Leg
106 95 their national distinctions 9 How different their manner, appearance & attitude from the “Americans” around them They have the vivacity, merry jest & laugh & expressive attitude & gesture of old france. They still speak french, which is heard a much as English & these two with Indian are often heard at once in the same group. They are generally of smaller size than the Americans & of light active figure, they are employed as boatmen, raftsmen & Indian traders. Most of them have Indian or half-breed wives which gives rise to another branch in the population of Minnesota. The scarf sash, pipe & macassins are the only remnants of the old voyageurs dress to be seen among them. The costume of the voyageurs was a mixture of Indian & European a blanket coat reaching to about the knees, leggins & the breech-clout, & mocassins. The head was covered in summer with a fur or felt hat, adorned with feathers, the hat usually black & somewhat after the “Spanish” form. Sometimes a close fitting woollen cap without visor—somewhat like a night-cap was worn. In Winter the clothing was warmer & a 9 Most of the early French inhabitant of St. Paul were traders who had come from Canada or their descendants. Many of these people were of mixed French and Indian blood. A large number of them are mentioned by name in an article by M. M. Hoffmann entitle “New Light on Old St. Peter's and Early St. Paul,” in Minnesota History, 8:27-51 (March, 1927). The voyageur were the French-Canadian canoemen who played an important role in the fur trade. Their activities and habits are described by Grace Lee Nute in a volume entitled The Voyageurs (New York, 1931). 107 96 “capuchin” hood, often attached to the collar of the coat protected the head. the hair & beard was often worn long & a sash was tied around the waist outside the coat.
C. K. Smith Esq, the Secretary of the Territory & the Governor received me with much kindness 10 & I received a diploma of my election as a member of the Minnesota Historical Society soon after my former connexion with the M[arylan]d Hist[orica]l Society was known. 11 I found Governor Ramsey giving audience to a deputation of Sioux Indians who had come from “Six's” village on the S t Peter's [ Minnesota ] river to ask supplies of food for their children & families whom they represented to be in a starving condition. Place by his side with the Indians seated around with their pipes sending forth 10 Charles K. Smith of Ohio was appointed secretary of Minnesota Territory when it was organized in 1849, and Alexander Ramsey of Pennsylvania became governor. Mayer met Ramsey before going to Minnesota. See ante, p. 4. Smith returned to Ohio in 1851, but Ramsey remained in the new commonwealth and became one of its foremost citizens. Chiefly as a result of Smith's efforts, the Minnesota Historical Society was incorporated on October 20, 1849. See Folwell, Minnesota, 1:257. A sketch of Smith is in Minnesota Historical Collections, 8:495-497. 11 There is no record of Mayer's membership in the Minnesota Historical Society in its archives or in its Proceedings for the years 1849 to 1858 (St. Paul, 1858). Mayer was librarian of the Maryland Historical Society from October 1, 1848, to November 1, 1850. He did not become a member of the latter organization, however, until November 3, 1853, though he was greatly interested in its activities. Journal, 1847-54, p. 41, 77; Sun, July 29, 1899; letter of Louis H. Dielman, chairman of the library committee of the Maryland Historical Society, October 12, 1931. 108 97 dignified volumes of smoke, I had a fine opportunity to observe their manners & mode of speech. An old man arose having given his pipe to his neighbor & shaking hands with the Governor & interpreter, began with much energy & expressive gesture to detail the object of their visit & its causes, pausing at every sentence to shake hands with the governor & to give the interpreter time to translate his speech. at the conclusion of every sentence the other Indians all exclaimed Hoo, i. e. [“] yes, it is so.” Having concluded, another old man arose with his war-spear in his hand & corroborated his friend's account. The Governor replied by rating them for their want of thrift & for certain violations of treaty which had occurred in their territory & told them that the power of their “great-father” extended from the rising to the setting sun & that no matter where they were they would be punished for their crimes. He concluded by giving them the required supplies & “tickets” for bread at the bakers in S t Paul. 12
12 Mayer's visit to the governor evidently took place on June 17, for in his diary under that date Ramsey notes: “Had a visit from 2 nd chief of ‘Six's’ band & his people, complaint—hunger—gave them an order on Tyler for 2 flour, one keg powder & some bread tickets.” The Sioux in question were from the village of Little Six or Shakopee, on the site of the present city of the latter name. The Tyler mentioned by Ramsey probably is Hugh Tyler, who was “special agent and acting commissary” for the Chippewa treaty at Pembina in the summer of 1851 and who played an important part in the consummation of the Sioux treaties of that year. See Folwell, Minnesota, 1:276, 238, 302-304. For a note on the name of the Minnesota River, see post, ch. 8, f.n. 10. 109 98
Some of these were fine specimens of Indians, I met them a few hours after in the street & was struck by the peculiar ease & grace of walk & attitudes having all the litheness & “nonchalance” of childhood with the dignity of man, they are remarkably erect, tall, with small hands & feet, & the graceful & varied manner in which their large blankets are worn, depending their majestic folds from their broad shoulders, & calling to mind the dignified occupants, of the senate house or Forum Their rifle carried with so much variety of posture & the num[e]rous pouches & trinkets add to their picturesque appearance. Their hair is worn long, some times plaited, & where parted vermillion is rubbed into the seam, feathers, wampum &c also adorn their heads. A shirt of figured calico is sometimes worn & a “breech-clout” always The leggins reach to the middle of the thigh & are attached to the belt by strips off cloth or skin, while a garter is tied below the knee & mocassins cover the feet.
Continued in Vol 2 of Journal 13
13 The first entry in volume 2 of the diary is preceded by the following notation: “Memoranda &c. Tour to Minnesota—1851. Vol. 2. St Paul's Ms to [ blank in MS. ] June 23rd to [ blank in MS. ] 1851.” The fact that Mayer did not fill in the blanks that he left at this point seems to indicate that he never completed his diary. For a discussion of the possibility that the dairy is incomplete or that part of it was lost, see ante, p. 25.
The use of mocassins contributes very much to the elegant walk of the indians—the feet have then their 110 99natural clasticity & by comparison the wearer of shoes or boots has a hobbled & awkward gate. We, who call ourselves civilized, scarce know what the natural walk of man is, we are so accustomed to the hampered motions of clodhoppers & dandies. Compared with the figures of the Anglo Saxon the Indian is lighter lither & more erect formed rather for feats of agility than strength. Power & Strength, seem the characteristic of the American. A boat-hand from the steamer is a model for Hercules—a Sioux warrior for Mercury or Mars.
111 100
VII Indian Life at Kaposia
Having received an invitation from D r [Thomas Smith] Williamson, a missionary to the Sioux, 1 to whom I had a letter, to visit him at his residence at the village of Kaposia or Little Crow's village (as it is generally called, that being the cognomen of the chief, whose name is, in Dacotah, “Chatah-koowamanni” or Sparrow hawk walks shooting, which by the French traders was corruptly translated “Petite corbeaux,” or Little Crow), 2 I was placed under the charge of an Indian who conducted me to his canoe a “dug-out” where his two wives were in attendance to paddle us to their 1 Dr. Williamson, missionary and physician, began his work among the Minnesota Sioux in 1834. For an account of his early activities in this region, see Folwell, Minnesota, 1:198-200. During his long residence among the Sioux, Williamson acquired a wide knowledge of their customs, and he seems to have given Mayer the benefit of his experience, for numerous notations and corrections in the diary are in his handwriting. 2 Little Crow's Dakota name is given as Chetan wakan mani, “the sacred pigeon-hawk which comes walking,” in Frederick W. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, 1:769 (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletins, no. 30—Washington, 1910). Mayer seems to have been a bit uncertain about the chief's name. Some cough sketches of Little Crow made at Kaposia, in the Sketch-books, 40:61, are labelled “‘Chatahukooavamannee’ or he who pursues the hawks ‘Sparrow hawks walks shooting’”; a finished portrait made at the Traverse des Sioux camp on July 2 bears the caption: “Chatannahkowahmanee The hawk that chases walking—alias—Little Crow or Petit Corbeau.” 112 101 residence. One of these, opposite to whom he sat, I being behind him, was evidently the favourite tho' both were young & pleasing in Expression. As we floated down the stream in the twilight, the paddles being lazily piled by our female sailors, my lord occasionaly condescended to assist them in their toil & between the intervals of his labor, discussed with his wife their evening meal & the topics of the day—a portion of food being passed to the less favoured lady in the stern who with rather a pensive expression occasionally joined in the conversation. The first had the childlike simple expression common to the Indian women & its pleasing effect is greatly due to the white teeth & dark sparkling eyes contrasting with the long black hair falling luxuriantly over the shoulders. They evidently possessed all the coquetry & teasing arts of their civilized sisters.
I have thus far found the Indian women mirthful, & enduring their laborious lot with patience & cheerfulness. They are not as attractive to an artist as the men, they being generally small & heavy, early marriage & constant drudgery having destroyed the symmetry of their forms. Their faces are very similar in expression[,] a good humored innocence of 113 102disposition [blurred] being evinced by it. As they grow old their faces are marked by lines of care & if ill humor grows with increasing years & they attain sufficient age to acquire the venerable white hair of senicity [senility] they are fit models for hags.
[The feet of many of the Indian women seem formed to rival those of the Venus de medici. They possess the same construction, the instep high & the foot arched, the toes strait & fully formed & free in their motions. The directions of the four toes forming a slight angle with the great toe & the second toe projecting beyond it, for it is the longest. The mocassin replaces the sandal & prevents the bones of the feet fro spreading. French shoes distort them by forcing them into a space too small for their reception.] 3
3 The paragraph inclosed is written in pencil on a left-hand page facing page 7 of volume 2.
Labour seems evidently to be the misplaced province of woman. Our civilized ladies are in all respects the superiors of their savage sisters. The only one I saw who in anyway attracted my attention was a young woman of about eighteen who was tall, with a figure as yet undestroyed by labor easy & graceful in her motions which were peculiarly feminine, modesty & the absence of stays being characteristics of the Indian women, and example which their more enlightened sisters might occasionally profit by. This, added to the neatness of her dress & glassy blackness of her 114 103long hair, black eyes with long dark lashes & the pleasing expression of more than usually regular features gave her great advantages of appearance over her fellow squaws. [So bashful was she that I seldom
Dr. Williamson
got more than a glance of her & as to sketching it was out of the question.] 4 The women appear to advantage in the canoes, the motion of the paddle serving to display the taper of the arm & wrist & the heaving of a well developed chest.
4 The sentence inclosed in brackets is crossed out in the original.
D r Williamson received me kindly & I was lodged comfortably under his hospitable roof for “three or four sleeps, “ as the Indians say. The village of “ Kaposia “ 115 104or “ the lithe people, “ is situated on a small piece of bottom land which intervenes between the bluffs & the Mississippi river. 5 It commands a very beatiful view up & down the stream & contains about three hundred souls. The village is composed of two sorts of habitations winter houses & summer houses or Tipis[,] a house, or Waykayas[,] skin covering[,] & Tipitonka's[,] large. 6 The winter house is a tent made of furless buffalo hides tanned like buck-skin & sewed together, supported on poles & held together at the seam by splints of wood, it being left open at the top to permit the smoke to escape & beneath is an aperture for egress & ingress—thus forming a circular conical edifice with the ends of the poles protruding from the top, the edges of the skin falling over & varying the colour & form. These are the winter habitations and are near ten feet in diameter generally. A fire is made in the centre & the occupants repose around it. In warmer weather it is 5 A similar meaning for the name “Kaposia” is given by A. W. Williamson in a list of “Minnesota Geographical Names Derived from the Dakota Language, with Some that are Obsolete,” published in the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, Thirteenth Annual Report, 1884, p. 107 (St. Paul, 1885). He declares that the name meaning “light” was given to the people of Little Crow's band “in honor of their skill in the favorite game of lacrosse . ... Success depended largely on swiftness (lightness).” For the location of Kaposia, see ante, p. 92 n; a picture of the village appears post, p. 112. 6 The Sioux word tanka means “large”; thus tipitanka may be translated as “large house.” Mayer applies the term, variously spelled, to the summer house of the Sioux. The wakeya was the “skin tent,” probably the same as the ordinary tipi. 116 105 sometimes used. It is then thrown open, the aperture of entrance being enlarge & the portions of slack skin supported on sticks, thus giving rise to two graceful festoons from either side of the seam.
[Teepees or Tipi (French pron.?) belonging to Indians of the plains are sometimes forty feet in diam[e]t[e]r. The poles of tamarak are of large size to the protruding end of the tallest of which is suspended a horses tail as indicating the residence of a principal warrior or a chief, the exterior being decorated with diagrams of his principal actions. I known not why, but there is a home feeling about the interior of a teepee. As I have lounged on a buffalo robe by the light of a smouldering fire, It reminds me of my childish positions on the parlour rug in front of a hickory fire, during the winter evenings. The teepee is rendered very comfortable in the winter by piling straw around the exterior & strewing it within, & laying buffalo robes & furs upon it. Without, the snow soon accumulates above the straw leaving only the upper portion of the tent visible. Closing the entrance & building a fire it becomes a snug refuge from the in-element winters. Tepees last four or five years, but owing [to] the rotting of the lower portion of the skins decrease in size. 7 The tipi or skin lodge is (tender tilia or lynn ——) peculiar to the western or Dacotah branch of the Indian race; the Algonquin 7 This sentence is written in pencil at the top of the left-hand page facing page 11 of volume 2. 117 106 having lived in bark-wigwams. The peculiar form of war club used by the western Indian was unknown to the Algonquin, as well as that style of dress in which the long fringes of skin, falling from the arms & leggins & adapted to the adornment of the horse man. The Algonquin dress was pedestrian, the Dacotah equestrian.
The Winnebago leggins are loose & gaitered & like the Sioux who do not gaiter are gartered below the knee. The Chippeway garter at the ankle. the Winnebago hair is never brought forward.] 8
8 The passage inclosed in brackets occurs on two left-hand pages facing pages 10 and 11 of volume 2. The second paragraph is written in pencil.

[mdenney]

The summer house is similar in form to our log cabin, tho' more nearly approaching a square, & the roof reaching nearer to the ground. It is formed of a frame work of saplings tied together with the [inner] bark of the [quaking aspen] 9 covered and interwoven with pieces of bark, the entrance is closed by a piece of buffalo hide which hangs by a point from above the door. Within, a platform or divan of about five feet in width & elevated some two feet & a half from the ground, extends around three sides of the apartment leaving a quadrangular space in front of the 9 The words inclosed in brackets are crossed out in the original manuscript. Elm and basswood bark were commonly used by the Sioux in the building of their lodges. For an excellent description of the construction of the Sioux summer house, see Samuel W. Pond, “The Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota as They Were in 1834,” in Minnesota Historical Collections, 12:353. 118 107 door & in the centre of the lodge about six feet square, in the centre of which a fire is made. Over this hangs the kettle. Formerly crockery of Indian manufacture took the place of the copper Kettles supplied by the traders. The smoke from the fire escapes thro' an aperture in the roof which also serves to admit the light. There are sometimes two of these. At the back of the divan skins are hung & robes & other peltry cover the surface, on which the inmates repose surrounded by their arms, trinkets, women & dogs, the combination of so many picturesque ac[c]essories & the light admitted in so artistical a manner contributing to make a scence [ sic ] full of scenic effect.
These houses are certainly very comfortable and admirably adapted to the indulgence of the indolent disposition of the Indian. Here he sleeps at night, and during the day lolls at his ease, smoking, chatting with his friends or repairing his arms & ornaments, all other occupations being considered unworthy the attention of a man. [During the season of occupying the Teepeetonkah they sleep much during the day, except when on a hunting excursion.] 10 All the drudgery, the work of cooking, paddling the canoe, bringing firewood, pitching the tipi, 11 in fact 10 The sentence inclosed in brackets is written at the foot of a left-hand page facing page 12 of volume 2 over the following notation in pencil in the handwriting of Dr. Williamson: “Sleeps at night? During the season of occupying the tipitonka or bark houses the men sleep as much by day as by night that is the young men unless when he goes ahunting.” 11 Above this word, in pencil, Dr. Williamson wrote “teepee.” 119 108 all the occupations of Indian life except such as appertain to war or the hunt or fishing 12 devolve upon the women who seem to [bear their laborious lot with cheerfulness & seem] 13 to consider department as their appropriate sphere.
12 Mayer originally wrote: “except such as appertain to war or the hunt divulge upon the women.” Opposite this statement, on the left-hand page facing page 13, Williamson wrote in pencil: “the hunt & fishing.” Mayer then seems to have corrected his first statement. 13 The passage inclosed in brackets is crossed out in the original.
At the gable end & over the door is shed or flat roof extending some eight or ten feet from the building & supported by posts unhewn. This furnishes a shady retreat where the inhabitants generally sit on benches or rather tables constructed on either side of the door on mats woven in tasteful patterns of rushes, by the squaws, while the children & dogs play around in all the wildness of savage license. These scaffolds are used for drying maize & dcl031;c and during hot nights for sleeping. Here sits the squaw (or tawechew (wife) “squaw” not being a Dacotah word,) 14 sewing mocassins or dressing a child's hair while she gossips to her fellow & watches the papoose 15 which 14 The Sioux or Dakota word for wife is tawin; the word tawincu means “his wife.” The word squaw is Narraganset origin, according to Hodge. “As a term for woman,” he writes, “squaw has been carried over the length and breadth of the United States and Canada.” Handbook of American Indians, 2:629; Stephen R. Riggs, Dictionary of the Dakota Language (Washington, 1852). 15 Facing this passage, which is on page 14 of volume 2, Dr. Williamson wrote in pencil: “papoose is not Dakota it should be hokshiyokope.” 120 109 hangs from the roof above. On the top of the shed are often laid the canoes of birch-bark & about them are seen the male children with their mimic bows & arrows, hunt, & war-dance, & not unusualy “my lord” & his friends ascend to overlook their own & their neighbors residences & occupations. 16 Within, the pipe is passed round while the war story, lengend [ sic ] or jest is told, or some 16 The passage in brackets appears on two left-hand pages facing pages 14 and 15 of volume 2. 121 110 “medicine” or mystery matter discussed. One or two are engaged in making a pipe or a ramrod or feathering an arrow another is humming the monotonous music of the dance, accompanying himself on a drum of native manufacture, while a woman is braiding and adorning her husband's glossy tresses. The venison is simmering in the kettle and a dog half concealed by the cumbrous trappings of a saddle is catching musquitos under his masters feet. In such occupations as these the Indian whiles away the year, the daily routine of sleeping, smoking & gossiping & an occasional swim in the adjoining river, being varied by a deer hunt, fishing, a visit to the adjoining towns, & the various dances, ball plays, & mysteries of savagedom. The houses were arranged in rows with the “tipis” intervening here & there, pleasantly varying the angularity & ruggedness of the long succession of “tetonkas.” x
[ x It is seldom that the Indians congregate in villages during the winter. After the gathering of their crop of corn in the fall, they seperate into parties of from one to three or four familes, & with their tipis depart for the woods which afford shelter from the inclemencies of winter & brings them nearer to the game on which they subsist during that season. Hunting & trapping for their own food & to procure skins for traffic are their occupations until the spring when they return to their village to plant the corn, in which employment the women are the chief actors. 122 111
Sioux Winter Lodge, or Tipi Sioux Summer Lodge
123 112
Kaposia Village
124 113 This important business over, the spring-hunt takes place, the women generally remaining in the village. 17 Those Indians who live upon the woodless plains of Nebraska & the Far-west lead a more nomadic & wandering life constantly following the trail of the buffalo. They have no tetonkahs, not being fixed residents of any particular spot. The skin lodge is portable & their only shelter.] 18
17 The object of the spring hunt was to catch muskrats. As it began in March, before the ice broke up on the lakes and streams, it is likely that the corn was planted after, rather than before, the hunt. Pond, in Minnesota Historical Collections, 12:370, 372. 18 The paragraph inclosed in brackets occurs on three left-hand pages facing pages 15 to 17 of the diary. Its position in the text is indicated by an “X” both in the text and at the beginning of the insertion. Mayer revised parts of the passage, in pencil, making it read as follows: “Hunting & trapping for their own food & to procure skins for traffic are their occupations until the spring [when they] go to their sugar camps, the men hunting muskrats whence they return to their village to plant the corn, in which employment the women are the cheif actors. This important business over, they return to their village to enjoy the ball play, gambling, &c or go in search of berries &c Those Indians who live upon the woodless plains of Nebraska and Missouri territories lead a more nomadic & wandering life.”
In the distance on the hill which overlooks the village [Kaposia], their former place of residence, repose on elevated biers, the dead. 19 Here retires the mother & the widow to weep over the loss of a child or husband & to pray the great-spirit for their happiness 19 The Sioux regularly placed their dead on scaffolds or in the branches of trees. The “burial customs and mourning” of these people are described in detail by Pond, In Minnesota Historical collections, 12:478—485. The Kaposia cemetery was a famous one, since most of the travelers who visited the upper Mississippi saw and described it. One of these travelers, Henry Lewis, includes an excellent picture of a Sioux burial scaffold in his Illustrirte Mississippithal, 82 (Leipzig, 1923). 125 114 in the spirit land. 20 The cradle of the child & the arms of the warrior are placed by their side that their spirits may serves [sic] their former owners as they did during his life. The scalps of hostile Chippeways, the hereditary enemy of the Dacotah, stretched upon hoops are placed by the body of the departed as evidence [to the great spirit] 21 of the valour of his race, and as a propitiation of the favour of the diety. On the death of an Indian his body is wrapped in his robe or blanket, & since the intercourse with the whites a coffin is, if possible procured. It is then placed upon a scaffold, raised six or seven feet from the ground, where it remains for several months, & even years, often until it falls to pieces & the bones are scattered upon the ground, to be collected & deposited in a grave. The coffins are often bound around with a red or brilliant colored piece of cloth, which makes them conspicuous at a distance. [Frequently portions of choice food are place at the grave for the use of the deceased, who consumes the spiritual portion, when the young men eat the remainder. A watch is concealed near-by who sees that no animal disturbs the repast & when a sufficient length of time has elaps[e]d for the consumption of 20 The last ten words of this sentence are inclosed in parentheses and followed by a question mark in pencil. Mayer seems to have doubted the accuracy of his statement, for above the line, in pencil, he wrote: “that their spirits may not injure them.” 21 The words inclosed in brackets are crossed out in the original. 126 115 the spiritual portion, she leaves it. If placed hot, it looses the spiritual portion with its caloric.] 22
22 The passage inclosed in brackets is written in pencil on a left-hand page facing page 17 of volume 2.
Soon after my arrival, while walking through the village my attention was attracted by a prolonged rattling, accompanied by a moaning, monotonous sort of chaunt [alternating with grunts & growling] 23 proceeding from a tipi, which was closed complet[e]ly while fern leaves with which the interior was strewn protruded from beneath the edges of the skins. I was told that it was occupied by a sick child over whom a conjuror was performing his incantations in order that he might remove the cause of his ailment.
23 The words inclosed in brackets are written in pencil in the original diary.

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[When afflicted by any misfortune they attribute it generally to the ill favour of some of the “medicine” men. An Indian at “Traverse-des Sioux,[”] whose child is diseased believes her misfortune to be the result of the jealousy of his relative on account of his influence with the traders.] 24
24 The passage inclosed in brackets is written on a left-hand page facing page 18 volume 2. Since Mayer here refers to Indians at Traverse des Sioux, it may be inferred that he added this note after he went to that place.
When a person is sick they believe some spirit, (with which they think every object to be endowed), to have taken possession of & overcome the spirit which naturally belongs to the sick man. This spirit is of course an evil one, & all means are resorted to 127 116by the conjuror to remove it. [When conjuring they dressed with little regard to display—the face painted black the hair disarranged & his blanket & breechcloth his only covering. [L.J.] Boury saw a conjurer lately in this dress shaking a rattle over the head of a patient. He grunt[e]d & for some time & then an assistant held a figure of a thunder-bird suspended from the end of a stick, before the door of the tent. 25 The conjuror fired at it with powder & then contin[ue]d his mummery.] 26 Prayers, supplications & threats, The most hideous sounds & grimaces [imitations of the concealed animal & grunts & groans] 27 are made to frighten away the spirit, & when these have been carried to as great an extent as the abilities or judgement of the conjuror permit him, he notifies the friends of the sick man that they must 25 The conjuror and his patient are pictured by Mayer in his Sketchbooks, 45:34; some drawings of “thunder birds” appear 42:71. The belief in a marvelous bird, whose voice was the thunder and who “used lightning as a means of destroying enemies,” prevailed among the Sioux in common with many other tribes of Indians. See Pond, in Minnesota Historical Collections, 12:403. Boury was an artist and a member of the party that went to Traverse des Sioux. Evidently the two men kept in touch with one another after leaving the West, for in his Journal, under date of January 18, 1854, Mayer records: “Boury called to borrow my Indian sketches. He is about leaving for Paris—his ideas of Art being merely imitative—to study drawing there.” Mayer drew a sketch of Boury at Traverse des Sioux. Journal, 1847-54, p. 142; Sketchbooks, 42:116. 26 The passage inclosed in brackets is written in pencil on left-hand pages facing pages 18 and 19 of volume 2. 27 The words inclosed in brackets ar written in pencil in the original diary. 128 117 be ready with the arms to destroy the spirit as it escapes from the body of the deceased. Accordingly when the din & clamor of rattle & voice have reached their height, a signal is given & the friends who stand at the door of the lodge discharge their arrows or guns at the invisible demon as he flies thro' the air. Should it be found that this effort has been unsuccessful, the conjuror repeats his hocus-pocus with whatever additional “medicine” he can summon to his aid. Should the man die, the reason is plain, the spirit was stronger than his “medicine” or else that another evil spirit had entered. Should the invalid recover he is a great doctor, & his medicine is all-powerful. “What fools!” we exclaim, “to be thus deluded,” but, does not a very similar confidence exist among our enlightened brethren? Rattles are not used but “puffs” often have a similar effect. The “Wechastah wakun,” man spirit, wonderful, mystery, is unknown but M Ds are manufactured by the gross from materials inferior to many an Indian. 28 Fern leaves are considered as peculiarly appropriate to the presence of the man of mystery & are therefore strewn upon the interior of the lodge.
28 Accounts of the customs connected with the activities of the medicine man, known among the Sioux as walcan witshasha or “mystery man,” appear in Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, 1:837, and in Pond, in Minnesota Historical Collections, 12:475-477.
The medicine man, in an Indian community is looked upon as the great wise-man and priest of the 129 118band to which he belongs. He is consulted on all occasions, and his opinion is considered almost infallible as it bears the stamp of divine origin & is the result of supernatural influences. His power is only surpassed by that of the cheif who consults him on all occasions of importance. The number of medicine men is not limited but any one can begin business for himself provided he has the requisite talents for hocus-pocus & humbug, and is a member of the medicine mystery, and entitled to take part in the medicine-dance. 29 The medicine mystery or college is a secret society composed of the principal men of the tribe who are initiated into the mystery with great ceremonies & bound to secresy; of what, it is difficult to say for the secret has never been divulged to any white man & those who have been longest among them know no more than the merest stranger. The dance & medicine feast take place at the same time and are the principal festival of the order.
29 The medicine men were not necessarily members of the medicine dance society, although they frequently belonged to that organization. A good account of the medicine dance of the Sioux is given by Pond, in Minnesota Historical Collections, 12:409-415.
On the death of an individual, his relations, as a manifestation of their grief, neglect all personal adornment, cleanliness, or attention to dress. Their hair is cut off, their faces painted black, they wear the poorest clothing & often lacerate themselves & “mortify the flesh” in the most painful manner. This mourning cannot be discontinued until a medicine 130
Chief Little Crow
131
Hoohamaza, or Iron Leg
132 121 feast has been given by the near[est relative of the diceased, who collects the bones of his ancestor, which by this time have fallen from the bier, preceeding the burial of which the medicine-feast & dance is celebrated.
All persons who are thought worthy of the honor & who are able to pay for it, (the initia[tio]n fee, which is divided among the members, being often very large) are prepared to be inaugurated as members of the [ medicine ] lodge. A large lodge or arbor is erected capable of accommodating the members & the candidates for admission who having been seated around it & the vessells containing the foods placed over the fires, the ceremonies are commenced with the initiation of the candidates. This takes place during the dance. Each member rises, with his medicine-bag in his hand & dancing round to the sound of the drum, points his medicine bag in the manne[r] of a gun, at the member to be admitted. The effect is instantaneous, he is seized with violent convulsions, retchings & spasms, during which he vomits or pretends to vomit, or else to bring out of his arm, leg or breast, a bead or small shell which is afterwards preserved with sacred care in his medicine-bag. Previous to entering the lodge the candidate has been privately instruc[t]ed in his part. Two beads are given him one of which he swallows, the other he is directed to conceal in his mouth or elsewhere & to produce it after having simulated violent spasms & 133 122convulsions. His signal for performing is the presentation of another's medicine bag at him. All finally go thro' a similar performance. Each in his turn presents his medicine-bag to his neighbor who falls as tho' shot. All go thro' this mummery & after some continuance of the ceremonies the feasting follows on which occasion every one is expected to eat to repletion & to devour all that is set before him. Presents prepared by the host & his relatives are then distributed to the guests. These are often valuable, as a horse, a gu[n] or a lodge. The bones are then interred, the ceremonies ended & the mourners at liberty to resume their accustomed habits. Children who are subject to epeleptic fits, convulsions & extraordinary dreams &c are generally brought up with a belief of their supernatural mission & at the proper age are installed as “great-medicine” men. To such an extent is their belief in this mystery carried that we cannot doubt their sincerity as I have heard a father performing these incantations & singings over his sick child. This institution is said to be of comparatively late origin, having been instituted about fifty years ago by the “Shawnee Prophet”] 30 The impression among the traders & those best acquainted with the Indians is that this famous secret consists in the knowledge of the fact that there is no secret 30 The passage inclosed in brackets, ending here and beginning on p. 121, is written on left-hand pages facing pages 24, 25, 26, and 27 of volume 2. The final sentence is written in pencil. Tenskwatawa, the “Shawnee Prophet,” was a twin brother of Tecumseh, the famous Shawnee chief. In 1805 the prophet called his tribesmen about him and “announced himself as the bearer of a new revelation from the Master of Life.” Mayer's impressions of Tenskwatawa's teachings seem to be inaccurate, since he denounced “witchcraft practices and medicine juggleries.” For a sketch of the “Shawnee Prophet” and his teachings, see Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, 2:729. 134 123 at all, except that of decieving [ sic ] themselves & the uninitiated with the idea of their greater insight into affairs than their neighbors, X a supposed connection with the spiritual world. note X
A stroll thro' the village [ Kaposia ] on the day after my arrival gave me some idea of my probable success in procuring sketches of Indian character. Pursuing my usual plan of taking my sitters unawares & without reference to their permission—or disinclination I met with various success. Many expressing surprise on discovering my object, & laughing immoderately at the result, & showing no objection to my continuing, while others observed with stoical indiff[er]ence & coldly declined being sitters.
The crowd of children, women dogs & youths who collected around me while I was sketching a “tipi” “teepee” gave me some notion of the extent of hydropathic treatment among them & the conclusion was, by no means, favourable to the cleanly habits of my friends. This is however greatly the result of necessity, for few have a sufficiently large wardrobe to enable them to make frequent changes in their costume. In the summer they bathe frequently, especially the younger portion of the community, the 135 124presence of unpleasant odours & apparent uncleanliness is therefore more attributable to the absence of the wash tub than of the bath. In attempting to sketch an old woman, I received a large portion of the Dacotah vocabulary of imprecations & expressions of countenance worthy of Hecate. They think that I acquire some influence over them by possessing their portraits—some have no such superstition, but consider it an honor.
I was inviter to enter the lodge of the Indian * who had brought me down the evening before, & I found him with his friends smoking & chatting. The pipe was passed round & smoked two or three whiffs & found the “Kinnikennick” quite agreeable. Their pipe-bowls are made of a red stone of close grain & susceptible of a high-polish. It seems a fine quality of sandstone & is procured at the “Pipe-stone quarry” which is situated [ blank in MS. ] distant [ blank in MS. ] The stems are of wood highly ornamented with porcupine quills, feathers & horse hair,—& the Kinnikennick is the inner bark of the willow dried & smoked with a small proportion of tobacco. 31
* Hoohamaza or Iron-leg [ author's note .] 31 Various kinds of bark were mixed with tobacco in the making of kinnikinick. The red stone from which the Indians made their pipe bowls was “‘an indurated clay,’ graduating into red shale,” which was secured at a quarry in what is now Pipestone County in southwestern Minnesota. The stone is known as “catlinite,” in honor of George Catlin, the “eminent painter of Indian scenery and personages,” who visited the quarry in the summer of 1836. Folwell, Minnesota, 1:119-121; George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, 2:201-206 (London, 1842). 136 125
In company with D r Williamson I visited the chief “Little Crow” to whom I was introduced as a friend of Captain [Seth] Eastman, U.S.A. which was evidently a recommendation to his regard, the Captain having for many years been stationed at Fort Snelling, became intimately acquainted with the Indians and was much liked by them. 32 His admirable sketches of the scenery of this country and of the Indians give him a high rank as an amateur artist, & [coming in the same capacity seemed a natural consequences to the Dacotahs]. 33 The chief is a man of some forty five years of age & of a very determined & ambitious nature, but withall exceedingly gentle and dignified in his deportment. His face is full of intelligence when he is in conversation & his whole bearing is that of a gentleman. He declined sitting to me until he was dressed in a manner more becoming his rank, he being clothed in nature's garb with the exception of his breech clout. 34 His uncle 32 For an account of Mayer's meeting with Eastman, see ante, p. 4. While Eastman was stationed at Fort Snelling he became much interested in the Indian life of the upper Mississippi region, of which he made numerous records in pictorial form. His wife, Mrs. Mary H. Eastman, wrote several volumes of western sketches, which he illustrated. 33 The passages in brackets is crossed in the original diary. 34 Mayer did draw some crude sketches of Little Crow's head at Kaposin. See his Sketchbooks, 40:61. A large drawing of the chief in elaborate costume, dated at Traverse des Sioux, July 2, 1851, is in the Ayer Collection. 137 126 Hoosaneree, (Grey leg) is a venerable old patria[r]ch & affable & gentlemanly in his manners 35 —indeed, I have seldom met with the same number of persons taken promiscuously from the ranks of civilized life who possessed so much genuine politeness, gentlemanly feeling & kindliness of manner as the Kaposia Indians.
35 A picture of this Indian is in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 41:50.

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This chief succeeded his father in the office of chief—he was absent from his village for some time & during his absence his brother had endeavoured to usurp his situation. As “little-crow” returned to his village & was nearing the shore in his canoe, his brother leveled his rifle. little crow saw it & dodged, the ball, well aimed, passed thro' both fore-arms as he grasped his paddle—& he bears the marks to this day. his brother was shortly after killed by the tribe for this offense. 36
36 Another account of this incident, which occurred in the summer of 1846, by F. V. Lamare-Picquot, a French traveler, appears in Courrier des Etats-Unis (New York) for March 12, 1847. It has been translated by Anne H. Blegen and printed in Minnesota History, 6:275-77 (September, 1925).
Early in the morning speech[e]s from the chief & “medicine bottle” a very loquacious & old Indian, & a principal man, announced that the hunters would depart in search of deer that day. 37 Soon, the young men were seen emerging form their lodges catching their horses, saddling them & providing the various 37 Two sketches of “Wah-kon-ojanjan or the Sacred light, or Medicine-bottle” are in Mayer's Sketchbooks, 40:77. 138
Sioux Children, Kaposia
139
Departing for a Hunt, Kaposia
140 129 necessaries for a residence of some days in the woods. The costume was different from any I had seen & as they wended their way through the dell leading thro' the bluffs, they seemed like knights of old, crusaders with long white cloaks & capoted monks who grasped the lance and sword for Holy church & savior's praise, some like rude Gothic bishops arrayed in temple copes as fit for fray as feast. The hoods which they wore are the usual winter headdress of the Dacotah, having been introduced by the French trappers at an early period of their intercourse & their name the “Capuch( in )” 38 indicates their origin in the old world. They are made of an oblong piece of blanket doubled & sewed together on one side. This seam passes from the forehead to the crown of the head & the hood is tied under the chin. [This “capuchon” when attached to the coat give that garment the name of a “capote” These coats are made of blanket “without a waist” & the “capuchon” is sewed to the collar. It is bound with a belt or sash in which the Indian or voyageur carries his pouch, pipe, & knife. The blanket is sometimes bound around the waist by a belt & disposed so as to answer the purpose of a coat.] 39 The blanket is put on in a manner resembling 38 Mayer seems to have been in doubt about the spelling of this word, since above the final syllable, which he inclosed in parentheses, he wrote “ on. ” 39 The passage inclosed in brackets is written on a left-hand page facing page 30 of the diary. The first sentence is crossed out; the final sentence is in pencil. 141 130 a cope, over a rude blanket coat, the leggings cover the lower extremities as usual, tho' of less showy materials than on more ceremonies occasions. The rifle, & pow[d]er horn, & pouch, the ever ready pipe, stuck in the belt, a pouch for the “kinnikennick” the knife with it's ornamented scabbard, the camp kettle slung to the saddle &, the blankets & skins, & ornamental gear of the horses are the accessories. The numerous picturesque groups that were formed & disolved as they prepared to depart employed my pencil, altho' the rapidity of their motions & the prejudice against my art militated somewhat against my success. The hoods were worn on this occasion as a protection against the musquitos which abound in this country.
The Indians of the Kaposia band have made but small advances in civilization yet they are among the most sober, honest & best conditioned of their race in the neighborhood of Fort Snelling. Some few have professed Christianity and several are educated, being able to read & write their own language. They were the pupils of the missionaries who have instructed them from books printed in Dacotah for purposes of instruction. The principal portions of the bible & a book of hymns have also been translated into the language and a paper entitle[d] “Dacotah Tawaxitku” 40 or “the Dacotah friend” is now published at 40 The second word of this title is written in pencil in the handwriting of Dr. Williamson. 142 131 S t Pauls edited by the Rev Gideon H. Pond. 41 The word Dacotah, by which name all that nation of Indians called by the French “ Sioux “ is designated, signifies a friend or a nation of friends—some translate it freely—“One of many”. 42
41 A list of books in the Dakota language, including a spelling book, readers, translations of portions of the Bible, and prayer books appear in Riggs, Dakota Language, xii. The Dakota Tawaxitku Kin, or the Dakota Friend is among the works listed and is described as a “small monthly paper, in Dakota and English, published at St. Paul by the Dakota Mission.” A file of this paper, which appeared monthly from November, 1850, to August, 1852, is in the library of the Minnesota Historical Society. Gideon H. Pond, its editor, and his brother, Samuel W. Pond, in 1834 went to Minnesota a independent missionaries; they later became affiliated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. See Folwell, Minnesota, 1:183. 42 Riggs, in his Dakota Language, describes the word “dakota” as an adjective meaning “feeling affection for, friendly”; Hodge, in his Handbook of American Indians, 1:376, explains that it means “allies.” The word “Sioux,” according to Dr. Folwell, is “the white man's contraction of Nadouessioux, ‘adder.’ a spiteful Chippewa nickname.” Minnesota, 1:79n.
Five or six young Sioux girls have been taken into the family of D r Williamson where they are instructed in their own language & receive the same English education and attention accorded to his children. A teacher has been placed here by [the] government & receives a regular salary but either from want of success in his efforts or inertion on his part there was no school at the time of my visit, altho' frequent applications are made to D r W for admittance to his family. 43 There are difficulties attending a day school, 43 The latter part of this statement originally read as follows: “the school has not been carried on for some years, altho' frequent applications are made to Dr W for admittance to his family.” Opposite it, on a left-hand page, appears the following notation in pencil in the handwriting of Dr. Williamson: “no school when I was there.” Mayer evidently accepted Williamson's correction, for he crossed out part of his statement and wrote above the line: “there was no school at the time of my visit.” 143 132 which are obviated in that where the pupils are constantly under the influence of their instructor & his family. Many cause are assigned for the failure of these schools, viz the intrigues of the trader, some of whom consider it their interest to keep the Indians in ignorance 44 the prejudice of the Indians to advancement & the inaction of the teachers. It is difficult to say which or whether all combined is the cause. I heard the children at D r W's recite & sing & they seemed in all respect equal to the generality of white children, in regard to intellect. 45 Their language 44 Mayer originally wrote: “Many causes are assigned for the failure of these schools, viz the intrigues of the traders, whose interest it is to keep the Indians in ignorance.” Opposite this statement, on a left-hand page, appears the following notation in pencil in the handwriting of Dr. Williamson: “some of whom consider it their interest.” In accordance with this suggestion, Mayer crossed out the words “whose” and “it is” and wrote above the line: “some of whom consider it their.” 45 The government teacher at Kaposia was S. M. Cook. In his report for 1851 he stated that “the school under my care has during the last year numbered, daily attendance, seven; number enrolled, twenty-one.” The school was not a success; according to Dr. Williamson its failure was due to reports spread among the Indians to the effect that they might receive the funds reserved for educational purposes “in cash if they would keep their children out of school.” The mission school that Mayer mentions was taught by Dr. Williamson's sister, Miss Jane S. Williamson. A number of her pupils boarded in Dr. Williamson's home or in the home of another white family living at Kaposia. Spelling, reading in English and Sioux, arithmetic, and geography were among the subjects taught in this school. Indian Office, Reports, 1851, p. 175-177, 182. 144 133 is well adapted to Music & the hymns which they sung were far more harmonious in their sound that [than] the English originals, altho' the Dacotah has not a softened sound in conversation; but is rather harsh & guttural.
I bid farewell to the Doctor, much gratified with my visit & he procured me two Indian women who promised to take me to St Paul for a “consideration.” As I entered the canoe he desired me particularly to observe the features of one, & for that purpose I placed myself opposite to her—but this was a breach of Dacotah etiquette not be permitted for her gestures & expression soon informed me that I must turn my back on the ladies, & substitute the contemplation of the surrounding scenery & the back of her half-breed son who sat in the bow and assisted the women in navigating our craft. Swiftly sped the light canoe altho' stemming the current of the impetuous Mississippi now swelled to it largest size. But the skill of the voyageurs directed our boat beneath the bending willows and meeting-boughs overhead, into the quiet sloughs between the Island & main shore. here we sped more rapidly thro' this forest canal, passed trees curled by lightning & storm into the water, & by drift logs of huge size, pine trees escaped from the forests one hundred miles above the falls of 145 134S t Antony. At last we emerged into the broad & rapid river & I lay in the bottom of the canoe, lazily admireing the scenery of this most beautiful of rivers until we reached St Paul & I landed again among the voyageurs, Yankees, French & Indians, with their peltries, notions, oxen, & pipes.
146 135
VIII Social Life at Old Fort Snelling
June 24 th 1851. Left S t Paul for Fort Snelling where I arrived in an hour & was politely received by Franklin Steele Esq. to whom I had a letter, he introduced me to his wife, formerly Miss [Anna] Barney of Baltimore. 1 I was enabled to procure board at Mr [Philander] Prescotts the interpreter & superintendant of Indian farming. He is an old resident of this country & familiar with the Indians, speaking their language fluently & connected with them by marriage. 2 His long intercourse with them seems to have given him a reserved manner 1 Franklin Steele was the sutler at Fort Snelling from 1838 to 1858. He was a prominent figure in frontier Minnesota, particularly in the development of the lumber industry. Hansen, Old Fort Snelling, 87; Stanchfield, “History of Pioneer Lumbering on the Upper Mississippi and Its Tributaries,” in Minnesota Historical Collections, 9:354. 2 Philander Prescott settled in the vicinity of Fort Snelling in 1820. He married Mary Keehei, a Sioux woman of the Lake Calhoun band. See Warren Upham and Mrs. Rose B. Dunlap, Minnesota Biographies, 1655-1912, 392, 615 (Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. 14). Prescott's report as “Superintendent of farming for the Sioux” for 1851 is in Indian Office, Reports, 1851, p. 173. 147 136 quite unusual in this country. He seems a well-meaning man, but I should preferr him a little more communicative.
The accomodations are rude in many respects & Shade of my grandmother! how would your ideas of housekeeping be outraged were you to witness the condition, optically & nasally of this domicil. The loft where your grandson reposes has the musty smell of the accumulated cobwebs of years, enhanced by the peculiar Indian odor, far different from that spicy import of Hindoostan which emanated from thy kitchen oh, revered old-lady, “Tis the smell of stale kinnikennick smoke, the incense arising from unwashed untensils & congregated greases, arising thro' the chinks of my lofty floor, from the kitchen beneath. Add to this, want of ventilation & a serenade in touching strains performed by a select band of Minnesota minstrels, vulgo, Musquitos—such are the luxuries of travel! yet do we not app[r]eciate home the more. We learn how others live & are happy, returning thanks for their enjoyments(!) yet we see grumblers in neat well ventilated whitewashed & carpeted garrets, eligibly situated in the most fashionable streets of our cities. Indeed, I have undergone a gradual descent in my accomodations since leaving home where I sleep in an “attic” & I now, as I write this, find myself seperated from Mother earth by a buffalo robe & my great-coat, sheltered from a pelting storm by the tent roof, [of my friend Governor Ramsey 148
On the Mississippi between Kaposia and St. Paul Mayer is second from the right.
149

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Interior of Prescott's House, Fort Snelling
150 139 of Minnesota] 3 more than one hundred miles from the comforts of Fort Snelling, surrounded by wild Indians & a country where no white men but traders & missionaries live nearer than S t Paul, yet I consider that is an ascent, figuratively speaking, from the garrett, if I may dignify those quarters with the name of my homely bedroom, which I occupied at the interpreters. 4 Yet a residence at Mr P's had advantages. His business & intercourse with the Indians brings many of them to his house & they furnish studies for thought & pencil which I should lose in more comfortable quarters.
3 The passage inclosed in brackets is crossed out in the original. 4 This portion of the diary was evidently written after Mayer reached Traverse des Sioux.
[His son in law, a tall raw boned Yankee, of rather amiable qualities is misnamed Petty -John, but John is unfortunately of enormous altitude & joined after the manner of a steam engine. 5 His motions, actions, & voice are all on the ponderous, hard & harsh style of execution as musicians would say. He walks the floor & an earth quake seems approaching, he asks me for 5 Prescott's son-in-law was Eli Pettijohn, a native of Ohio who went to Fort Snelling in 1841 as a government employee to furnish supplies and teach farming to the Sioux. He is listed in the manuscript schedules of the Fort Snelling census for 1850 as a farmer, thirty-two years of age. His wife, Lucy, was aged twenty-one. In the late seventies Pettijohn went to California, where he began the manufacture of the breakfast foods since known by his name. See a sketch of Mrs. Prescott in the Minnesota Historical Society Scrapbooks, 1:16, and an obituary sketch of Pettijohn in the Minneapolis Tribune, May 23, 1915. The census schedules are in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society. 151 140 the salt & I am startled by a trumpet blast. Night & morning we have prayer & singing (be it far from me to ridicule any one's devotions,) & after “brother” Prescott who is short & pursey & wears large silver spectacles & an expression of devotional contentment, has closed the book & announced the hymn, son in law starts off, instant[ly] in full blast & hard at it as tho' determined to bear down all opposition, the hymn book & Psalmn tunes in lengthy line on the table before him, his ponderous jaw “swings off” & the deep cavern of his mouth is opened. The sounds which are emitted tho' loud & full apparently due to the mouth owe much to the impending organ of expressive size & acquiline form which is the striking characteristic of our friend's face. His eyes are half closed, for all his nervous energy is required to the work [of] the vocal machinery below. A lock of his long straight hair has escaped from behind his ear & covers one eye, at the same time that it furnishes a background to the nose when viewed in profile. His head is cast up, his long digits trace the verse, & his extensive feet are with drawn beneath the bench, in modest retirement & concentrated effort. When he has completed the task he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with a calico handkerchief & subsides into Egyptian solidity. He would be a “pendent” for Hogarth's old woman in the church seene in that artist's series of Industry & Idleness. For all this, Mr Petty-john is a man to 152 141be respected, & I am indebted to him for his good intentions in rescuing me for one night from the horrors of that loft, altho' he scarcely bettered my condition by placing me in the interpreters office, where the accumulation of dust & stale tobacco smoke was in proportion to that gentleman's repugnance to permitting the “women folk” to “put things to rights.”] 6
6 The paragraph inclosed in brackets is written on three left-hand pages facing pages 40 to 42 of volume 2 of the diary. The point at which it should be inserted is indicated by Mayer.
A letter from Governor Ramsey introduced me to Mr Nath[anie]l McLane, the Indian agent at this post, a brother of Judge [John] McLane of Ohio. 7 He is a very kind & clever old gentlemen, hospitable & communicative, & his house, to which he has given me a general invitation, (endorsed by a special one to dinner, the proper style) is rendered specially agreeable by the presence of his pretty-black-eyed & healthy complexioned daughter who inherits many of her father's attractive qualities. After the deprivation of ladies' society for some time one discovers it's value as a portion of the sum of our 7 Nathaniel McLean was Indian agent for the Sioux at Fort Snelling from November, 1949, until the spring of 1853. He is listed in the manuscript schedules of the For Snelling census for 1850 as a printer, sixty-two years of age. His family included Mary McLean, aged twenty. He was known as a journalist, since in 1849 and 1850 he was one of the editors of the Minnesota Chronicle and Register, a newspaper published at St. Paul. His brother was Judge John McLean of the United States Supreme Court. Daniel S. B. Johnston, “Minnesota Journalism in the Territorial Period,” in Minnesota Historical Collections, 10:254. 153 142 habitual enjoyments,—& after gazing on nothing much superior to the Indian women, with their dark complexion & high cheek bones & disgusting figures it is certainly very refreshing to meet a young lady of refinenement [ sic ], & a respectable degree of beauty. My situation therefore excuses this eulogium on the merits of Miss Mary McLane. As this fair one stood by me on the porch of her fathers dwelling, having respectively ministered to our inner selves by partaking of the aforesaid dinner we descried at a distance on the prarie a long mass of dark colour creeping slowly across the prarie, & as they approached nearer & nearer we descried a detachment of dragoons under command of the redoubtable Leut t Gardner, having in charge seven Winnebagoes whom they had arrested in attempting to leave the country to which they had been removed by the Government & return to their former hunting grounds which they had sold to the U.S. 8
8 Lieutenant John W. T. Gardiner of Company D, First United States Dragoons, ws stationed at Fort Snelling in 1848-49 and again from 1850 to 1852. The Winnebago, under a treaty negotiated in 1845, gave up their lands in Iowa. They were given a reservation at Long Prairie, in Todd County, Minnesota, and to this place many members of the tribe were removed between 1848 and 1850. The Winnebago, however, were dissatisfied with this reservation; they “were induced to maintain a constructive residence at Long Prairie because their annuities were paid there, but many individuals and small bands remained wanderers.” It was probably one of these groups that Lieutenant Gardiner took to Forth Snelling during Mayer's visit. Folwell, Minnesota, 1.311-318; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, 49 (Boston, 1891). 154 143
June 27. Spent the after part of the day with Mr & Mrs Steele & family [,] Mrs Whitehorn and Leut [Anderson D.] Nelson at Lake Calhoun[,] which is distant about seven miles from The fort. 9 It is approached by a road across a most beautiful prarie, slightly rolling in surface & skirted by “Coteaus” covered with forest. The eye can pierce an unobstructed distance of several miles across this beautiful lawn, for such it seems to be, & one is constantly expecting to see neat farm houses appearing at every turn. The whole country has the appearance of a cultivated grazing country, its rolling & hilly surface being varied with open praries & wooded hills, the trees appearing in clumps & masses of a few acres, looking like the orchards of the Eastern states at a distance. This description is applicable to the whole valley of the Minnesotah river (St Peter's). 10 Lake Calhoun is about three miles long by two broad, & its clear glassy waters are confined in shores covered with pebbles of various colours. From this you rise 9 Lake Calhoun is now within the city limits of Minneapolis. In 1850 the Steeles had four children—three daughters, aged seven, four, and two, and a son, Franklin, aged one year. Mrs. M. Barney, probably Mrs. Steele's mother, and Rachel Steele also lived with the family. See manuscript schedules of the Fort Snelling census, 1850. Lieutenant Nelson was stationed at Fort Snelling from 1848 to 1849 and again from 1851 to 1853. Cullum, Graduates of the U. S. Military Academy, 104. 10 The Minnesota River was called the St. Peter's by early explorers and traders. The Indian name was officially given to the stream by act of Congress in 1852. The meaning of this name is discussed by Dr. Folwell in his Minnesota, 1:455-457. 155 144 to the undulating surface of a prarie one [on] one side, while wooded banks skirt the opposite shore. The lake abounds in fish & is a favorite pleasure ground for the offices of F[ort] S[nelling].
[ Fairy Circles —compass flower
Perfect circles of grass of more luxuriant growth than the surrounding & included prarie are among the phenomena of the West. They vary in diameter from six to one hundred feet, and increase annually, by the seed falling outwards. They have been named “Fairy circles,” & many hypothoses have been advanced as to their origin—some attribute them to the rolling of the buffalo. Others to the presence of a species of mushroom, which decaying, leaves the ground it occupied of richer quality than before.
Another wonder of the prarie is the compass-flower the leaves of which always grow from the stalk in a due north & south direction, provi[n]g an unerring guide to the lost wanderer on these pathless plains. It is known as the “rosin plant” & attains a height of three or four feet. It is not found north of Prarie du Chien.
Ant hills of large size are seen tenanted by their numerous & industrious inhabitants & surrounded by high walls of luxuriant grass. Snakes & roses, prarie flowers.] 11
11 The section inclosed in brackets is written on two left-hand pages facing pages 43 and 44 of volume 2. The title and the last five words are written in pencil.
156 145

[mdenney]

IX Camping at Traverse des Sioux
June 29. Unexpectedly summoned I found myself on board the “Excelsior” 1 in company with Gov r Ramsey & Luke Lea Esq, the commissioners appointed to treat with the Dacotahs for a portion of their territory west of the Mississippi. 2 Hon H[enry] H. Sibley, Mr [Ashton S. H.] White of the Home department, 3 D r Forster [ Thomas Foster, ] Secretary to the commission, Mr [W. C.] Henderson, 1 The “Excelsior” left St. Paul on the evening of June 28; it is likely that Mayer boarded the boat on the following morning at Fort Snelling, where Governor Ramsey went on board. Luke Lea arrived at St. Paul on the evening of June 27 on the “Excelsior.” Twenty-five dragoons, who had been promised to Ramsey as an escort, received such late notice that they could not get ready to leave and the boat departed without them. Goodhue, in Pioneer, July 3, 1851; Ramsey Diary, June 21, 28, 1851. 2 The membership of the treaty commission is discussed in some detail by Folwell in his Minnesota, 1:275-277. 3 White and Mayer seem to have been very friendly at Traverse des Sioux; Mayer mentions him frequently in the diary and the two men sketched portraits of one another. See Mayer's Sketchbooks, 42:31, 56, 62; 43:46. White was a clerk in the department of the interior at Washington. He accompanied Lea from Washington when the latter went west to act as commissioner at the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota. See Register of all Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, 1851, 134 (Washington, 1851); Ramsey Diary, July 26, 1851. The sketches of White and Mayer are reproduced, post, p. 161, 162. 157 146 Mr [Richard] Chute & his lovely wife[,] 4 M r [Hugh] Tyler, commissariat, Indian traders, & men of French, half breed & American blood 5 & a delegation of the principal men of the Kaposia, band, headed by their Chief were also on board, & the tent furniture, buffalo robes, blankets, rifles, mocassins &c indicated our destination to be the “Traverse des Sioux” a trading post & Indian village, about one hundred miles & ten miles from the mouth of the S t Peters or Minnesota 4 Chute probably went to Traverse des Sioux to represent the interests of the trading firm of W. G. and G. W. Ewing of Fort Wayne, Indiana, with which he was connected, and which had numerous claims against the Sioux. He later settled permanently in Minneapolis. See W. H. C. Folsom, Fifty Years in the Northwest, 521 (St. Paul, 1888); Folwell, Minnesota, 1:277n. Goodhue, in the Pioneer of July 10, refers to Mr. and Mrs. Chute's presence at Traverse des Sioux: “In our company are a gentleman and lady from Indiana;; and the lady is certainly the most resolute, enthusiastic admirer of frontier life that ever was seen. She is the most artless, fearless, confiding, enchanting woman that ever went anywhere; and her loveliness contrasts so favorably with the coarseness of those wild red women.” 5 In addition to the treaty-makers specifically mentioned by Mayer, the following individuals were present at Traverse des Sioux: Alexis Bailly, L. J. Boury, F. Brown, Joseph R. Brown, Hercules L. Dousman, Alexander Faribault, William H. Forbes, James M. Goodhue, William Hartshorn, Alexander Huggins, Henry Jackson, Joseph Laframboise, William G. Le Duc, James H. Lockwood, a Mr. Lord, Kenneth McKenzie, Martin McLeod, Nathaniel McLean, Stephen R. Riggs, Franklin Steele, Wallace B. White, and Dr. Williamson. According to Goodhue, “There probably never before was an Indian treaty attended by so few persons and with so small expense.” Goodhue, in Pioneer July 24, 1851; Hughes, in Minnesota Historical Collection, 10:111. 158
Camp Life, Traverse des Sioux
159 148 river, 6 where they [the] different bands of Sioux were invited to send their principal men to treat with the U.S. for the purchase of their lands.
6 The distance from the mouth of the Minnesota River to Traverse des Sioux by water is only about seventy-five miles.
June 30 th 1851, found us at Traverse de Sioux on a lovely prarie which rises gently from the river & so undulates until reaching the more distant & level praries. The Indians as we had advanced into their country, and stopped at their villages assumed a wilder character, but did not seem so happy, well fed & comfortable as those who live near S t Paul & receive annuities from the U.S. 7 As we approached these village the chief assembled his band on the hurricane deck and as a compliment to the village they were nearing in full chorus sung their brave song or chaunt, at the end of every stanza of which a whoop & yell was given. A speech from the chief followed, at the end of which all gave the usual approving “Hoah!” When nearing “traverse des Sioux” they all attired themselves in full costumes with eagle plumes & turkey-beards[,] deer tails & horse tails &c. that they might appear to their brethren in becoming 7 Those who had had more frontier experience than Mayer did not feel that annuities, which were received by the Sioux of eastern Minnesota under the terms of a treaty negotiated in 1837, served to improve the condition of the natives. Goodhue, in the Pioneer for July 17, notes the arrival of a group of Sisseton at Traverse des Sioux whom he describes as “better looking, cleaner and better dressed, than the lower bands; which perhaps by reason of their never having been paralyzed and stupified with annuities.” For the provisions of the treaty of 1837, see Folwell, Minnesota, 1:160. 160 149 plight. The provision, baggage &c were landed & an ox given into the hands of our butcher who divided it, surrounded by eager eyed Indians, evidently much in want of food. The tents were pitched, the U.S. ensign hoisted in front of the commissioner's marquee, & every preparation made for a fortnight's stay in camp.
Little Crow being attired in state he fulfilled his promise to me by sitting for his portrait. 8 His headdress was peculiarly rich, a tiara or diadem of rich work rested on his forehead & a profusion of weasel tails fell from this to his back & shoulders. Two small buffalo horns emerged on either side from this mass of whiteness, & ribbons & a singular ornament of strings of buckskin tied in knots & colored gaily depended in numbers from his head to his shoulders & chest.
8 The chief made this promise when Mayer visited him at Kaposia. See ante, p. 125. The portrait is reproduced ante, p. 119.
Our camp consisting of several tents and tepees commands a view of S t Peters' river, the prarie with its numerous lodges, the trading & mission houses and the surrounding country, & is tenanted by the commissioners & their officers & a motley collection of Frenchmen and half-breeds, traders, interpreters, voyageurs & trappers. The Kaposia band seem to be considered as especially our friends, & their tents are pitched near by, so that an intimate acquaintance exits between them & the members of the camp. 161 150Their proximity affords an opportunity for constant observation of their habits & manners, & an agreeable intercourse with them confirms us in our ideas of their superiority in condition & manners to their neighbors.
The afternoon was occupied in witnessing a ball play performed by the women. 9 This is one of the most exciting & picturesque sights which can be witnessed, particularly when played by the men, their figures being more perfect, & the dresses more picturesque & beautiful than the women. Greater numbers engage in it, the stakes a[re] more valuable & the game consequently more exciting. The women's dress is their usual costume with the exception of the blanket, and some additional ornament disposed around the chest.
9 The game described by Mayer was known as “Ia crosse.” It was played in varying forms by Indian tribes throughout the eastern part of North America. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, 127.
The Kaposia Indians are noted for their proficiency in this game, & their name has some reference to this quality. Kaposia—the light or lithe, active people. A challenge having been sent to the Indians resident here was accepted. The stake were arranged & they proceeded to attire for the contest by denuding themselves to their breech-cloth & adorning their heads in every variety of fanciful manner. The hair is new greased combed & plaited & then, with the aid of feathers, ribbons, streamers of red cloth, & bands of richly worked embroidery, arranged with care in the 162 151great variety of manners which their imagination suggests. A collor or necklace & bracelets or armlets are put on. The breech cloth, worked sometimes in fanciful patterns by the squaws, is bound round the waist by a cincture. To this is generally attached some pendant ornament of feathers, furs & cloth, hanging from their belts & it contributes greatly to the effect of motion as they fly rather than run after the ball. Often a wing of some bird of large size hangs behind them, [or attached to the arm]. 10 Often a string of sleigh bells give animation to the chase as it mingles with their cries & eager exclamations. Their toilet is completed by painting their faces with brilliant colours, and with a less valuable pigment made of a white or black clay they color their bodies. A favourite ornament is produced by smearing the palmn of the hand & then patting the surface of the body so as to leave the impression of the hand. An Indian is thus often covered with these hands. This dress, or rather the want of it, displays their elegant figures to the greatest advantage, & on no occasion does the Indian appear in so suitable & tasteful a costume & one which is perfectly in harmony with the occupation in which they are to engage. The neat & airy head dress, brilliant in color & not subject to derangement from motion, but contributing to the grace of their swift movements, as their long hair, 10 The phrase inclosed in brackets is written in pencil in the original diary. 163 152 & pendant “tails” [“]wamekenunke” stream upon the wind, their feathers & crests tossing, their bodies turning with serpentine ease & deerlike swiftness, they run, vault & spring into the air, & course from one end to the other of the lawn-like prarie, like so many Mercuries, the brilliant colors of dress & paint, & the flashing armlets & diadems, & varied position leading the eye thro' an exciting & luxuriant chase.
Prepared for the game they sally forth to the appointed ground with loud whoops of defiance to their opponents, & headed by the chief, who seldom takes a part in the game, it being thought beneath his dignity except on extraordinary occasions, so far to relax the stateliness of his deportment. As they march along with stately & unencumbered step they seem so many monarchs of the soil they tread. Their blankets worn like regal robes, their heads with crowns seem clad. Their forms of classic purity & motion free as air. Arrived at the point where the game is to begin & where the judges, who are the old men & chiefs, are assembled, the various articles to be contended 164 153for are arranged, if of convenient size they are strung upon a pole and erected on the ground. Larger articles as guns, saddles, horses &c, which are often gamed for, are merely placed at the stand. Bounds are the appointed beyond which each party endeavors to throw the ball, one party taking one boundary & the other the opposite, each strives to throw the ball beyond their own boundary & every time they succeed counts a game won. Every man is provided with a stick (“La crosse”) made somewhat like a shepherds crook, so contrived as to retain the ball when it is caught or scooped up with the crooked portion. With these they “scoop up” the ball from the ground & catch it in the air & throw it often a great distance towards their respective boundaries.
At a signal the game begins by tossing the ball into the air, then commences the contest for victory, who shall throw the ball the oftenest beyond the boundary of their party. All active Indian catches it in his “crosse” as it descends, the opponent endeavours to prevent him from throwing it, but he flies like a deer 165 154before his pursuers, his hair & “wamehenunke” streaming behind him, a beatiful race is the consequence, the possessor of the ball rapidly moving his “crosse” from right to left to retain the ball in its place, his opponent striving to the utmost to pass him & prevent him from attaining his purpose, but he artfully baffles his pursuers who are close upon his heels, suddenly he turns, dodges his rival, springs, like the “flying mercury” into the air, & the ball is hurled to an immense distance eagerly watched by the players. As it approaches the ground & its place of descent is apparent, the contending parties are instantly at the spot & then begins a strife to secure it again, a mass of writhing, pressing & flexible humanity, thrusting their “crosses” beneath each other's legs to try to procure the wished for prize, then, as one gets it & in trying to escape with it, it is knocked from his hand or he is tumbled on the ground his opponent falling often with him quickly they recover, and a thousand attitudes which display their beatifully lithe & elegant figures to the greatest advantage are produced in rapid suc[c]ession. One is at last successful, he shakes the crowd from him & runs as near to his bounds as he can without danger of losing his ball, he is at the extreme end of the prarie a half-mile distant from the place he left, again they contend and the ball is carried nearly to the opposite bounds, the chiefs & old men encouraging their men with a rapid stream of Dacotah fluency, the players contending to the 166 155
Good Thunder in the Costume of a Ball-player
167 156

[mdenney]

Indian Apollo Ball-player
168 157 utmost, their suppressed words of eager rivalry indicating the vigour of their exertions, now in the eastern bound, now by your side, the crowd of spectators escaping from the stream of players by whom they are likely to be overwhelmned, from one end to the other of the immense p[r]arie, from your side to the distant horizon, they course with incredible swiftness.
One can have no idea of the physical powers of his race until he has witnessed this display, their rapidity seems that of animals of deerlike nature, their movements are so perfectly free & so unlike the motions of the white man. tho' surpassed by the Anglo Saxon in strength & powerful muscular developement they possess a symmetry of form & equality of developement, unknown to those who are engaged in one particular employment, developing one set of muscles at the expense of the others & losing activity in acquiring power. But one fault may be found with the figure of the Indian, the arms are often a little too effeminate & small from want of exercise. In other respects they realize our ideas of the classic purity of form displayed in Grecian art. Their straight spines, robust chest, flexible loins, finely rounded shoulders, straight & tapering limbs & small hands & feet are all ideal in character. No better “life-school” could be conceived, the figure no more clothed than decency requires, the little ornament there is contributing to the contrast of colour & forms, displaying the beautiful 169 158curves & changes of the figure to advantage. The models unconscious of their positions, which vary from the repose of the fatigued victor to the fleet progress of the racer. The figures varying in character expression & costume. These games continue often for the whole day with slight intermissions for rest, and in the course of this time forty or fifty miles at least must be run, as they easily keep pace with a trotting horse. At the conclusion of the game the victorious party take possession of the stakes & divide them among the winners. No one is permitted to become angry or to take offence at any rough treatment he may receive.
The 1st July tested the efficiency of our tents, a violent storm arose & pelted furiously over our heads, attended by a sweeping blast which threatened to overthrow our tents & tear them to pieces. All hands stood to the tent-poles which quivered like aspen stems, & succeeded in holding them fast until the abatement of the storm. Thanks to the sailmaker & his patron S t Paul, they leaked not & like a ship which has weathered Cape horn, are [our] tents were considered proved as we are not likely to meet so serve a blow soon again.
This camp life is by no means a hardship as many might suppose, situated as we [are] in a beatifully picturesque & healthy country surrounded by agreeable & amusing associates, & hospitably entertained by “Uncle Sam”. A mattress laid on the ground 170 159& wrapped in a blanket[,] we breath[e] the pure air of the prarie & sleep as soundly as in the most luxuriant couch. The constant respiration of pure air, the suc[c]ession of novel scenes, & the variety of cheerful companions & amusing studies of character, contribute to engender good digestion & cheerfulness. The day is passed in visiting, reading[,] intercourse with the Indians, seeing the ball-plays, dance &c & at night, talks by the camp fire of frontier & Indian subjects, witnessing an Indian dance or listening to their wild, monotonous music, or tuning to a neighboring tent where are assembled the gentlemen of Frenchdescent the traders & voyageurs, we hear the canadian boat songs, or the national airs of old France sung with spirit by melodious voices, while the occasional introduction of English songs, as “Sparkling & bright,” “Auld lang syne” & “Away with Melancholy” give variety to the evening's amusements. The voyageur songs had their origin probably in Normandie whence they were brought by the Acadians & Canadians & adapted to the movement of the paddle & oar. 11 The tunes are very light airy & graceful, full of beautiful expression suited to their purpose & The accompaniments of the voyageur as he paddles his canoes down the rivers of the north & west. The words are the ballad of the French 11 “Voyageur Songs” is the title of a chapter in Nute, The Voyageur, 103-155. Mayer records the music of a voyager's song in his Sketchbooks, 43:49. 171 160 peasant sometimes poetical but the chief merit of the song is the music. Seated at table I heard French & Indian spoken almost exclusively & the contenances of foreign appearance, French, Indian and half breed, beguile me into a belief of being in some foreign land. May it not be called foreign, twenty five hundred miles from home & in an Indian country. 12
12 Mayer exaggerates somewhat the distance between Baltimore and Traverse des Sioux. Actually he was about eighteen hundred miles from the former place.
A few feet from the voyageur singers are the “sauvages” whose music presents a contrast to their more civilized neighbors. The instrument most popular with the Indian is a drum made by stretching a piece of hide over the top of a keg, or similar to a tambourine. The music is a monotonous measure suited to the motions of the dance, two or three notes perpetually repeated, varying little in measure. Seated at the door of the lodge while their companions & voyageurs are grouped around a [sic] they commence their drumming & after a few moments one of their number issues from the tent attired somewhat in the costume used in the ball-play & with a war club tomahawk or other war like instrument in his hand. With grunts & wild cries he places himself in an attitude which resembles more a wild animal about to spring on its prey than anything I can recall, & dances, or rather performs a succession of jumps, stamps & hops, on both feet or on one, thrusting 172
A Sketch of Mayer by Ashton White
173
Colonel Henderson Ashton White
174 163 his head out & in & grimacing in a wild & malicious manner, evidently giving great delight to his friends & exercise to himself. This is one of their less important dances, the Winnebago dance[,] but it has the character of all of them.
A War dance was celebrated last night by “Little Crow” & his braves. None were admitted but those who had taken a scalp & signalized himself by his valour. Each carried his favourite weapon a war-club, tomahawk or lance & danced, in the bear-style, elevated their weapons above their heads & accompanying the “tam-tam” of the drums with a war song. At the conclusion of each stanza, if I may so speak, one of them stepped into the ring formed by his companions & related in a bravado manner some of his most daring exploits, 13 at the conclusion of the recital a “hoah!” from all was the response & the dance & song succeeded for a few minutes when another stood up & endeavour[ed] to exceed his predecessor in the extravagance of his story. This is the only occasion on which the Indians are permitted to “bragg” & vaunt their own courage & acts. They avail themselves of the privilege however & use to the fullest extent this safety-valve for their vanity. This [is] a sagacious institution of the savage & might 13 The following notation in pencil occurs at this point: “Divan—Arab resemblances to the Indians.” The main body of the manuscript is here written upside-down on left-hand pages, but this notation is rightside-up at the head of a page. It faces page 62 of volume 2. 175 164 be introduced with great profit in some civilized communities Instead of being annoyed as one often is by a drippling stream of self-conciet [ sic ] it might be retained by its possessor until an appointed period when it might be discharged in a torrent—leaving him at other times as the Indian is, perfectly silent on the subject of his great actions. 14
14 The sentence inclosed in brackets is crossed out in the original diary.

[mdenney]

Friday morning last [ July 4 ], as we rose we wer[e] star[t]led by a horseman riding into camp & announcing, “Hopkin's is drowned”! But the night before the gentle Missionary had been among us & attracted all by his pleasant manners. 15 We could not realize the news. He had gone early that morning to bathe in the river, his usual custom. He did not meet his family at breakfast & soon his clothes were found on the bank. Every effort was made to discover, the body by the assembled whitemen & Indians, but without avail. A net was finally stretched across the channell in hopes that it might arrest it in its downwards course should it float. Three days had 15 This tragedy occurred on the morning of July 4. As a mark of respect for the dead missionary, the “grand celebration” planned for the day was cancelled. Robert Hopkins had been connected with the Traverse des Sioux mission station since 1843; he was ordained in 1848. Stephen R. Riggs, “The Dakota Mission,” in Minnesota Historical Collections, S:121, 123; Indian Office, Reports, 1851, p. 171; Goodhue, in Pioneer, July 10, 1851. 176 165 passed and a terrible storm arose, peal after peal of thunder called the dead man from his grave & he arose, a ghastly object covered with the mire & filth of the treacherous stream, his hands clenched in agony & his limbs stiffened in death yet tranquil was his face, as tho' a prayer had passed them with his breath. A noble looking Indian & a voyageur raised him from the water still turbid with the passing storm, laved him & swathed him in linen & as the canoe glided with its ghastly load towards the former desolate home of the window it was followed by a long line of silent spectators, Indians, French & Americans. It stopped at the point where he was last seen & in the faces of the Sioux quivering lips & moistened eyes were seen tho' Indian stoicism opposed their utterance. An aged woman bent beneath a century stood before the body. She burst forth into a flood of grief as she grasped her robe convulsively & bent herself in agony. Oh, my son! my son! she exclaimed he had pity on me, he fed me, he clothed me, & when I was sick he nursed me. This was all I could gather, for the sobs smothered her words. She retired weeping, & then returned & the tears seemed dry the fountain was exhausted, she had lost a friend. The Indian is accused of want of feeling yet this woman was an Indian, [& there were others near her in silent grief.] 16 The rude coffin was soon prepared, he widow took a 16 The passage inclosed in brackets is written in pencil in the original diary. 177 166 last look, her grief was too deep for tears, silent, chill. Then the hammer & the nails the unostentatious procession to the grave, the hymn, a prayer, the clods returned upon the coffin lid &— 17
17 Hopkins' body was found on July 7. An account of this event, similar to that given by Mayer, and of the funeral of the missionary is presented by Goodhue in the Pioneer, July 17, 1851. Volume 2 of Mayer's diary is concluded at this point.
178 167
X Half-breeds and Indians
Strolling thro' the village of Karmeahton 1 in company with that fine specimen of a French gentleman Mr [Alexis] Bailly our camp master, we stopped before the farthest lodge. 2 “This is the lodge of Rda-mah-nee or the ‘walking rattler’ & here lives Winuna or Nancy M c Lure the natural daughter of an officer of our army & an Indian woman. We'll go in.” On a mattrass covered by a nest quilt sat 1 Mayer seems to have some doubts about the name of the Indian village at Traverse des Sioux. In the margin of a drawing of Nancy McClure he first spelled the name “Karmeahton,” but he crossed this out and substituted “Kaghmeatowar.” He translated this name as “the village in the corner.” Sketchbooks, 41:102. 2 Bailly was a prominent Minnesota fur-trader of French and Indian blood. His trading post and home were located at Wabasha. There seems to be some question regarding his position at Traverse des Sioux. Mayer here refers to him as “camp master,” and he speaks of Tyler as “commissariat” ( ante, p. 146). According to Dr. Folwell, however, Bailly was “commissary of the commission” that negotiated the treaty. Goodhue speaks of Bailly as “assistant commissary” and “one of the most useful and active camp men, that ever was.” Upham and Dunlap, Minnesota Biographies, 28; Folwell, Minnesota, 1:279; Pioneer, July 17, 1851. 179 168 Winuna, the most beautiful of the Indian women I have yet seen. 3 She is sixteen & the woman has scarcely displaced the child[,] girl [in her face and figure] 4 She possesses Indian features softened into the more delicate contour of the Caucasian & her figure is tall, slender & gracefully girlish. Her eyes are dark & deep, a sweet smile of innocence plays on her ruby lips, & silky hair of glossy blackness falls to her dropping shoulders. She received us with a smile & a modest inclination of her head. She understands English, for the departed missionary had been her instructor, but excessive modesty prevents her essaying to speak, her only answers being the innocent smile downcast eyes & nod of affirmation or denial. She has been visited by most of our camp, the rarity of her beauty being the attraction, & the purchase of mocassins the ostensible object.
3 Nancy McClure lived with her grandmother in the Sisseton Sioux village at Traverse des Sioux, of which Red Iron, or Mazasha, was the chief. Her father, Lieutenant James McClure, was stationed at Fort Snelling from 1823 to 1837. In the latter year he was transferred to Florida, where he died in 1838. Nancy's Sioux name was Winona, which “means the first-born female child.” “The Story of Nancy McClure,” in Minnesota Historical Collections, 6:439, 440, 445; Hughes and Brown, Old Traverse des Sioux, 3. 4 The words inclosed in brackets are crossed out in the original.
She has been courted for a year past in person & by proxy by David Ferebeaux [ Faribault ] a young Indian trader of half breed descent & the ceremony of marriage was yesterday performed at our camp, 5 5 The wedding took place on July 11. The groom was the son of Jean Baptiste Faribault, a prominent Minnesota fur-trader. The bride relates that she “wore a pretty white bridal dress, white slippers and all the rest of the toilet,” and that “there was a wedding dinner too, and somebody furnished wines and champaigne for it, and I was toasted and drunk to, over and over again.” Nancy McClure, in Minnesota Historical Collections, 6:446, 4447; Goodhue, in Pioneer, July 17, 1851. 180
Nancy McClure
181
The Wedding of Nancy McClure and David Faribault
182 171 [two horses were given for the bride.] 6 At the commissioner's marquee were assembled the bride & groom & his relatives, the Governor & the commissioner, & suite the voyageur half-breeds & canadian & the Indians. Mr. Alexis Bailly the Magristrate [ sic ] present read the service of the Episcopal church the different personages grouped around forming a picturesque & novel scene. 7 The bride congratulated, the marriage was announce[d] by a salute of champaigne corks, the report of which soon summoned the camp to hilarious harmony, which flowed on thro' a hearty dinner & the subsequent toasts & broke like the surf as the company dispersed singing simultaneously by individual & collective efforts “Sparkling & bright” “Auld lang syne,” & “Vive le Compagnie”. A speech from the commissioner was translate[d] into Sioux & delivered to the Indians. 8
6 The sentence inclosed in brackets is written in pencil in the original diary. 7 According to Goodhue, Bailly was a “Justice of the Peace in and for this county.” See Pioneer, July 17, 1851. It is interesting to note that Bailly's wife was a sister of David Faribault. 8 Lea was the speech-maker. The text of his talk is given by Goodhue in the Pioneer for July 17, 1851.
As we retu[r]ned from dinner a long train of Sioux men & women, on horseback & on foot, arrayed in 183 172their best, were seen wending towards the camp. The principal men formed a circle in front of the marquee entertained the commissioners with a dance. We were soon called from this, however by the announcement of a “Virgin's feast”. It is customary among the Sioux, when the character of any young unmarried girl is impeached for her to give a feast to which she invites all who profess virginity whether male or female. A most solemn oath is taken as to the truth of their profession & any one who knows aught to the contrary is at liberty to drag the perjured person from the ring to be disgraced & hooted at by the tribe. A circle was formed one half of which was occupied by young girls, the other by youths & young men. Proclamation having been made by the crier that all who were virgins might join the ring, the guests took their places on the ground having previously touch'd a stone [which was painted red & a arrow stuck into the ground near it, the latter the emblem of piercing of conscience,] 9 which were placed together in the centre of the ring, that being the form of the oath, & signifying their acceptance of the terms of the invitations. All assembled, the crier proceeded to divide the food consisting of cakes of flour & [tea] 10 which were served round to the encir[c]led guests a portion having been 9 The passage inclosed in brackets is written in pencil in the original diary. 10 The word “coffee” is crossed out in the original diary; it is replaced by the word inclosed in brackets written in pencil. 184 173 sent to the old persons first. Scarcely had they begun to eat & a morsel was about to enter the mouth of one who had been seated with downcast head enveloped in her blanket, when a young man pushed thro' the crowd siezed her rudely by the arm & dragged her from the ring followed by the hoots & sneers of the spectators. She arose, wrapped herself in her blanket & concealed herself behind a group of her relatives, the picture of dejection & chagrin. The feast was concluded with the consumption of the food, no similar event occuring except one in which I figured & unintentionally incurred the deprecation of one of the traders, a married man, who as a joke, having been a participater in the wedding festivities, seated himself in the ring. The bystanders suggested that some one should “pull him” out & I accepted the office. He was much offended & the Indians have laughed heartily at him. As I intended no harm, he must take the will for the deed. The friends of the girl who had been disgraced declare her innocence. The legend of the maiden's rock is connected with this custom. A rejected lover maliciously dragged Wenuna a Sioux maiden from the virgin feast. The false accusation stung her to despair & she threw herself from the rock. 11 [Many instances are cited where malice has induced unsuccessful lovers or seducers 11 Maiden Rock is a prominent landmark on the east bank of Lake Pepin. The legend connected with this spot tells of Winona, a Sioux maiden whose parents tried to force her to marry a man of their choosing when she loved another. Rather than obey, she threw herself from the rock into the waters below. The legend is related by Stephen H. Long in his narrative of a “Voyage in a Six-Oared Skiff to the Falls of Saint Anthony in 1817,” in Minnesota Historical Collections, 2:24-26. 185 174 to drag innocent girls from the feast. Some have had the boldness to date their accusers to the proof & to demand the evidence of the truth of the accusation & thus thwarted their enemies.] 12
12 The passage inclosed in brackets is written upside-down on a left-hand page facing page 8 of diary A.
[An Indian has just arrived who announces that two Dacotahs have been waylaid by four Chippeways & scalped within two miles of S t Pauls. It is reported that they proceeded to the house of a trader as they returned to their country & endeavoured to rob him, but he shot one & wound[ed] the others & they retreated. Again an advanced courier of the Siseton Sioux reports that two men, a woman & two children who were travelling northward have been murdered by night & scalped by the Chippeways.] 13

[mdenney]

13 The paragraph inclosed in brackets is written on two pages facing and following page 8 diary A. The last sentence is written in pencil. Examples of Sioux-Chippewa conflict are common in the pioneer history of Minnesota. The Sioux, living in the southern part of the territory, and the Chippewa of the north were hereditary enemies. A brief account of their perpetual warfare, by Willoughby M. Babthingy, is published under the title “Sioux versus Chippewa,” in Minnesota History, 6:41-45 (March, 1925). On July 5, 1851, a report reached Traverse des Sioux “that two Sioux had been lately killed by a party of Chippewas,” according to a news item in the Pioneer July 17.
This is an unusually rainy season & we are almost daily visited by storms of wind & rain, the severest came at midnight and broke our dreams by its terrific 186
Sibley's Tent at Traverse des Sioux Sibley is at the right, Henderson at the left.
187
James M. Goodhue at Traverse des Sioux
188 177 howl. For two hours the lightning flashed continously, illumnating all things as by an ill-omened meteor, & the roar of the accompanying thunder the torrents of descending rain & the wind driving like hurricane follow as the herald of its deeds. The accumulated streams descended from the hills & filled in its impetous force a ravine that was near us adding its voice to the chorus of contending sounds. The stout canvass of our tents seemed every moment about to be rent into ribbons, the tent poles trembled & the cords threatened to part at every blast. The fly had already given away & flapped as tho' it were a “thunder bird” demanding our destruction. The storm seemed spent & as it paused for an instant as tho' preparing for a redoubled attack, the profoundest darkness intervened & we heard [ sic ] the calls of our neighbors enquiring for our safety & informing us of their overthrow. They were the only ones who had suffered this misfortune, the other tents & all the teepees stood firm. All concurred in declaring, in poetic language that they'd “met with many a breeze before but never such a blow” The “oldest inhabitant” who happened to be present remembered one, his reserve, on such occasions, which had surpassed it. The storm abated & during the hours which passed till daylight jokes travelled from tent to tent thro' the pitchy darkness & the scien[ti]fic gentlemen were enabled to make many useful hygrometrical observations, such as the cubical contents of 189 178hats, the absorbing powers of pantaloons & blankets & eff[ic]acy of wet sheets & hydropathic treatment. A musical gentleman suggested “A wet sheet & a flowing sea” and another dreamingly remarked that his feet were in the grand canal. A filtering apparatus seemed suspended above my head & a simalar one watered my knees while my blanket was gently moistended [ sic ] by the spray of the rival drippings. At daylight my clothes were “bien humide”! & my hat, ‘twas water proof, & held a quart. [“]It's an ill wind blows no one good” is a good proverb—so I used the impromptu cascade from the prarie as a shower bath & dried my clothes by the morning sun & exercise.
We had thought that in this storm Eolus had spent his force but it has proved otherwise for scarce a day has passed without a gust & we are heartily tired of its continuance. The Indians seem the same & for the purpose of appeasing the thunder bird or destroying his influence, a medicine man of the Siseton band, yesterday gave a dance for that purpose. 14 An arbour was constructed of branches of trees large enough for a man to sit in & a vessel of water, a stone painted red & a crooked stick on which to rest his pipe 14 Opposite this statement, at the foot of a left-hand page facing page 5 of diary B, Mayer wrote in pencil “The Thunder is the most important of the Dacotah gods.” Goodhue calls this dance the “Round dance.” He describes it in the Pioneer of July 17, 1851. Mayer's sketch of the dance is reproduced post, p. 181; an engraving based on the sketch, but lacking its life and action, is published in Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, 6:352. 190 179 were placed at the door & at the foot of a tall sapling, to the top-most branches of which a figure of the thunder bird was suspended. It was cut in thin bark & rudely represented the form of a large bird. At the extremity of a radius of about fifteen feet from this centre, a hedge made of boughs similar to those of the arbor & about four feet high enclosed the sacred ground. Four arches of branches span[n]ed the entrances to the circle & four saplings with thunder birds at their summits similar to the centre one but smaller were erected at the side of each gate. The arrangement was quite picturesque & resembled the arbors & hedges of an ornamental garden walk.
The ceremonies commenced by the medicine man issuing from his lodge near by his face painted black & long grass interwoven with his hair, with rattle & flute, & esconcing himself in the sanctum-sanctorom. He immediately began his song and tat-too-ing on the drum similar to the usual Indian dance music, excepting an occasional variation with a whistle. A number of men attired in their best ran into the ring & danced in a circle around him keeping time with their feet to the music, & passing around him in a continuous procession, the faces expressing the liveliest animation. In a short time the music ceased & they retired with a whoop to recruit for another effort. Soon the music began again the dancers entered reenforced by additional performers, as they danced or jumped around, the horseman collected at 191 180the next “set” lent their aid to the performances. As the invigorating music of the medicine continued more joined in until the area was nearly filled with a moving mass of men boys & women, Jumping around yelling & raising their weapons above the nodding plumes & headdresses. The horsemen then galloped at full speed around the exterior of the hedge their spirited horses flowing hair & agitated drapery & plumes forming a most exciting & beatiful equestrian spectacle. They realize the figures carved by the hand of Phidias on the freize of the Parthenon to represent the annual festival of the Greeks in honor of Minerva. The small size, yet spirited & “blooded” character of the horses as they pranced & curveted in wild freedom around the circle their swelling necks & expanded nostril, the wild eye peering beneath a shaggy fore-lock, their long sweeping tails & mains & their tapering limbs & small unshod feet, suggest at once the live-like procession of the Elgin marbles —& prove the truth of the artist's observations & study of nature.
The stirrupless riders some with their blankets strapped around them their hair streaming from their crests of nodding eagle plumes at once recall the heroes of the parthenon clad in Grecian cloak & helmn. Nor does the Indian in this respect alone recall the classic models of antiquity, some have features strictly classic & their finely turned limbs & perfectly developed chests reminds us at once of the 192
The Thunder or Round Dance
193
Camp and Grave-yard, Traverse des Sioux
194 183 ancient marbles of the museums of Art. There are other points of resemblance, as in their mythology where the God of thunder plays a conspicuous part. These are but instances of similarity produced by parralell stages of progress & habits of life—for at times when clad in long capotes & blankets, mounted with short stirrups & carrying a tall gun, or seated by their tent doors, they seem tableaux vivants of the Arabs of Vernet. 15
15 Emile J.H. Vernet was a French painter of military subjects. There are two notations in pencil on a left-hand page facing the preceding passage. The first reads: “Hoo-hah-a-tah, many limbs or Briarcus is an Indian name”; the second, which is almost exactly opposite the end of the paragraph, consists of the single word “Asiatic.”
[The Indian horse is a descendant of the Andalusians who have escaped from their mexican owners & formed large herds in the vast plains of the wests. They are their [ sic ] of the average size tho less powerful than the domesticated animal & apt to be motled in colours. Their name & tails are long & sweeping & in speed & activity they equal the civilized animal. Those in possession of the Sioux have been passed from tribe to tribe, stolen by their neighbors & have thus travelled northward. They are smaller than the Southern stock.] 16
16 The paragraph inclosed in brackets is written in pencil on a left-hand page facing page 2 of diary C. Horses were introduced into the New World by the Spanish invaders of Mexico. Stray and escaped animals formed wild herds; the horses multiplied rapidly on the plains of the Southwest, and gradually they spread northward. They were also introduced into the Mississippi Valley by explorers and by Indians who stole them from southern tribes. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, 1:569.
As the music & motion grew faster & furious the 195 184horsemen retired & marksmen stood with guns at each gate, & at a given [signal] discharged them at the centre thunder bird who immediately fell to the ground, when the actors retired & the dance was done. As to the eff[ic]acy of this festival time will show, but tho' the thunder seemed appeased, the wind fully compensated it's loss last night, my unfortunate hat was found outside my tent this morning thoroughly immersed—the rim having formed a gutter which collected the water & isolated the crown.
13th July. As we returned from church at the mission where doctor Williamson has preached, 17 a large crowd of Indians had collected in view of a puppet which was intended to represent an enemy & around which an Indian was imitating the maneuvres of an attack showing the manner of a particular feat of the performer. A party of chiefs seated by proclaimed the lists open, when a brave with a gun cautiously approached & placed his blanket on a short stick to represent an ambush, & hid himself behind it, presently he hears an enemy, he cautiously looks out, then stealthily raises his gun & fires, he hides, again, fires, he is discovered, retreats almost on hands 17 Goodhue reports that the services of July 13 were held in the “little mission school house, which the writer, with W.B. White is allowed to used for a bed room during the treaty.” He relates that “Dr. Williamsom gave us a very interesting biography of the lamented Mr. Hopkins.” Pioneer, July 17, 1851. 196 185 & feet, he is loading & about to shoot, he is seen & flies again, fires as he runs hides himself & fires again, he is the victor he rushes out tramples the enemy to the ground scalps him & retires with the applause of the spectators.
July 14. Mr. Chute, Mr. Henderson[,] Mr. Boury & myself left the camp in [search] of a lake said to exist on the opposite side of the river Minnesota about five miles distant. With on exception, greenhorns at the paddle it was our primary lesson in voyaging. Our progress being up stream & in position to a strong current our arms were fully employed, what with poling, paddling & portaging, wading thro' sloughs & pushing the canoe thro the tangled bushes & grapevines, for we passed thro forests which are usually ten feet above the river bank, we had a very fair example of voyaging by the time we arrived at th foot of the opposite bluffs. Concealing our canoe in the “cat tails” which bordered our landing to prevent it's appropriation by some stray Indian, we proceeded to explore the surrounding country in search of this much-talked-of lake. What at a distance appeared a beatiful hill side clothed with a green sward proved a steep ascent covered with thick grass & brambles near as high as our heads. Attaining the summit, the extensive view repaid our toil.
On the opposite side of the river extends an undulating prarie bounding the horizon & about three miles in length. At the farthest extremity a white 197 186dot & a few conical elevations indicated the position of our camp. The river enlarged to ten times its natural size & covering meadows & skirts of timber usually high above its banks, extended to the foot of the
Sisseton Lodges at Traverse des Sioux
hills on the opposite side. These are abrupt & high & their surface is variagated with timber & open spaces, clear as tho' prepared for the reception of a herd of cattle or a wheat crop. These, extended as far as the eye can reach, present a pleasing contrast to the opposite shore. Anon we shall see neat farmhouses & villas perched upon the commanding eminences where now the eagle soars & the buzzard flapps his murky wing. Nature seems to have prepared this land for the husbandman, cleared open fields for his grain & cattle, & scattered forests for his buildings fire-wood & game & for his food & recreation provided lakes well stocked with fish—while the air seems pregnant with health & vigour.
198 187