ublishing, for the use of teachers and scholars, a compendious
dictionary, and general grammar of the Indian languages.

_25th_. In a conference with Mr. Murray, of Pennsylvania, a recent
commissioner to adjust Indian claims at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, he
gave me Mr. Robert Stuart's testimony respecting the Indian trade, to
read. It appears from the document that the gain on trade of the
American Fur Company, from 1824 to 1827, was $167,000. From 1827 to 1834
it was $195,000. From the aggregate of ten years' business, there is to
be deducted $45,000, being a loss from 1817 to 1824, which leaves a
profit on seventeen years' trade of $317,000.

Mr. Murray presented me a copy of the Commissioner's report. These
claims have not yet received the action of the department. The
commissioners set out with requiring of traders high evidence of the
_individual_ indebtedness by Indians. They finally decided that the
Winnebago debts were _national_. They went further--they approved and
adopted the decision of a meeting of the claimants themselves, as to the
application to individual firms, of the fund. This decision was
subsequently sanctioned by _eight_ Winnebago chiefs, who were stated to
be authorized to act for the nation.

The error, in all these cases, seems to be, that where a tribe has
agreed to set apart a generic sum to satisfy debts, and the United
States has accepted the trusteeship of determining the individual
shares, that the Indians, who cannot _read, or write, or understand
figures, or accounts at all_, and cannot possibly tell the arithmetical
difference between one figure and another, should yet be made the
subject of these minor appeals. The TRUSTEE himself should determine
_that_, by such testimony as he approves, and not appear to seek to
bolster up the decisions of truth and faithfulness, by calling on Indian
ignorance and imbecility, which is subject to be operated on by every
species of selfishness.

_25th_. I applied to the department this day, by letter, for leave of
absence from my post on the frontier, to visit Europe.

_26th_. I called on Mr. Poinsett, the Secretary of War, and received
from him the permission which I had yesterday solicited. I also called
on the President (Mr. Van Buren), who, in turning the conversation to
the state of disturbances on the frontier, evinced the deepest interest
that neutrality should be preserved, and asked me whether the United
States Marshal at Detroit had f