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Title: Wau-bun The Early Day in the Northwest

Author: Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

Release Date: April 27, 2004 [EBook #12183]

Language: English

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Produced by Gene Smethers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

WAU-BUN,

THE

EARLY DAY IN THE NORTHWEST.

BY

MRS. JOHN H. KINZIE,

OF CHICAGO.

"If we but knew the exact meaning of the word 'WAU-BUN,' we should be happy."—Critic.

"WAU-BUN—The dawn—the break of day."—Ojibeway Vocabulary.

* * * * *

PHILADELPHIA

1873

PREFACE.

Every work partaking of the nature of an autobiography is supposed to demand an apology to the public. To refuse such a tribute, would be to recognize the justice of the charge, so often brought against our countrymen—of a too great willingness to be made acquainted with the domestic history and private affairs of their neighbors.

It is, doubtless, to refute this calumny that we find travellers, for the most part, modestly offering some such form of explanation as this, to the reader: "That the matter laid before him was, in the first place, simply letters to friends, never designed to be submitted to other eyes, and only brought forward now at the solicitation of wiser judges than the author himself."

No such plea can, in the present instance, be offered. The record of events in which the writer had herself no share, was preserved in compliance with the suggestion of a revered relative, whose name often appears in the following pages. "My child," she would say, "write these things down, as I tell them to you. Hereafter our children, and even strangers, will feel interested in hearing the story of our early lives and sufferings." And it is a matter of no small regret and self-reproach, that much, very much, thus narrated was, through negligence, or a spirit of procrastination, suffered to pass unrecorded.

With regard to the pictures of domestic life and experience (preserved, as will be seen, in journals, letters, and otherwise), it is true their publication might have been deferred until the writer had passed away from the scene of action; and such, it was supposed, would have been their lot—that they would only have been dragged forth hereafter, to show to a succeeding generation what "The Early Day" of our Western homes had been. It never entered the anticipations of the most sanguine that the march of improvement and prosperity would, in less than a quarter of a century, have so obliterated the traces of "the first beginning," that a vast and intelligent multitude would be crying out for information in regard to the early settlement of this portion of our country, which so few are left to furnish.

An opinion has been expressed, that a comparison of the present times with those that are past, would enable our young people, emigrating from their luxurious homes at "the East," to bear, in a spirit of patience and contentment, the slight privations and hardships they are at this day called to meet with. If, in one instance, this should be the case, the writer may well feel happy to have incurred even the charge of egotism, in giving thus much of her own history.

It may be objected that all that is strictly personal, might have been more modestly put forth under the name of a third person; or that the events themselves and the scenes might have been described, while those participating in them might have been kept more in the background. In the first case, the narrative would have lost its air of truth and reality—in the second, the experiment would merely have been tried of dressing up a theatre for representation, and omitting the actors.

Some who read the following sketches may be inclined to believe that a residence among our native brethren and an attachment growing out of our peculiar relation to them, have exaggerated our sympathies, and our sense of the wrongs they have received at the hands of the whites. This is not the place to discuss that point. There is a tribunal at which man shall be judged for that which he has meted out to his fellow-man.

May our countrymen take heed that their legislation shall never unfit them to appear "with joy, and not with grief," before that tribunal!

CHICAGO, July, 1855.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

Departure from Detroit

CHAPTER II.

Michilimackinac—American Fur Company—Indian Trade—Mission
School—Point St. Ignace

CHAPTER III.

Arrival at Green Bay—Mrs. Arnot—General Root—Political Dispatches—A
Summerset—Shanty-Town—M. Rolette—Indian
Morning Song—Mr. Cadle's Mission—Party at Miss Doty's—Misses
Grignon—Mrs. Baird's Party—Mrs. Beall

CHAPTER IV.

Arrangements for Travelling—Fox River—Judge Doty—Judge
Réaume—M. Boilvin—Canadian Voyageurs: their Songs—The
Kakalin—Wish-tay-yun—Rev. Eleazar Williams—Passage through
the Rapids—Grande Chûte—Krissman

CHAPTER V.

Beautiful Encampment—Winnebago Lake—Miss Four-Legs—Garlic
Island—Wild Rice

CHAPTER VI.

Breakfast at Betty More's—Judge Law—Fastidiousness; what came of it

CHAPTER VII.

Butte des Morts—French Cognomens—Serpentine Course of Fox
River—Lake Puckaway—Lac de Boeuf—Fort Winnebago.

CHAPTER VIII.

Major and Mrs. Twiggs—A Davis—An Indian Funeral—Conjugal
Affliction—Indian Chiefs; Talk-English—The Wild-Cat—The
Dandy

CHAPTER IX.

Housekeeping—The First Dinner

CHAPTER X.

Indian Payment—Pawnee Blanc—The Washington Woman—Raising
Funds

CHAPTER XI.

Louisa—Garrison Life—Dr. Newhall—Affliction—Domestic
Accommodations—Ephraim—New-Year's Day—Native Custom—Day-kau-ray's
Views of Education—Captain Harney's Mince-Pie

CHAPTER XII.

Lizzie Twiggs—Preparation for a Journey—The Regimental Tailor

CHAPTER XIII.

eparture from Fort Winnebago—Duck Creek—Upset in a Canoe—Pillon—Encamping in Winter—Four Lakes—Indian Encampment—Blue Mound—Morrison's—A Tennessee Woman

CHAPTER XIV.

Rev. Mr. Kent—Losing One's Way—A Tent Blown Down—Discovery of a Fence—Hamilton's Diggings—Frontier Housekeeping—Wm. S. Hamilton—A Miner—Hard Riding—Kellogg's Grove

CHAPTER XV.

Rock River—- Dixon's—John Ogie—Missing the Trail—Hours