judgment of Gov. Dodge. He
may have been ill advised of some facts. The Pillagers certainly do not,
I think, as a band, own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the
Mississippi below Sandy Lake, but their warlike character has a sensible
influence on those tribes, quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa
Rivers. The sources of these rivers are valuable only for their
pineries, and their valleys only become fertile below their falls and
principal rapids.
From Mr. Warren's statements, the sub-agencies of Crow-wing River and La
Pointe have been improperly divided by a _longitudinal_ instead of a
_latitudinal_ line, by which it happens that the St. Croix and Chippewa
River Indians are required to travel from 200 to 350 miles up the
Mississippi, by all its falls and rapids, to Crow-wing River, to get
their pay. The chief, Hole-in-the-Day, referred to, was one of the most
hardened, blood-thirsty wretches of whom I have ever heard. Mr. Aitkin,
the elder, told me that having once surprised and killed a Sioux family,
the fellow picked up a little girl, who had fled from the lodge, and
pitched her into the Mississippi. The current bore her against a point
of land. Seeing it, the hardened wretch ran down and again pushed
her in.
_8th_. The Rev. Mr. Fleming and the Rev. Mr. Dougherty arrived as
missionaries under the Presbyterian Board at New York. Mr. Fleming
stated that he had been one of the expelled missionaries from the Creek
country, Georgia. That he had labored four years there, under the
American Board of Commissioners, and had learned the Creek language so
as to preach in it, by first _writing_ his discourse. The order to have
the missionaries quit the Creek country was given by Capt. Armstrong
(now Act. Supt. Western Territory), who then lived at the Choctaw
agency, sixty miles off, and was sudden and unexpected. He went to see
him for the purpose of refuting the charges, but found Gen. Arbuckle
there, as acting agent, who told him that, in Capt. Armstrong's absence,
he had nothing to do but to enforce the order.
Mr. Fleming said that he had since been in the Indian country, west, in
the region of the Osage, &c., and spoke highly in favor of the fertility
of the country, and the advanced state of the Indians who had emigrated.
He said the belt of country immediately west of Missouri State line, was
decidedly the richest in point of natural fertility in the region. That
there was considerable wood on the streams, an
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