hostiles from complying with the treaty. Ethlo Emathla, Governor of the
Tallahassees, promised the general to be in with his people on a
specified day. It is reduced almost to a certainty that he has been
prevented from doing so by the representations of some person or persons
in a quarter, the name of which charity alone forbids to mention. The
only object is, and for a long time has been, to keep entirely out of
the way, to hide themselves from the whites, and every effort to bring
them to battle, either by sending small or large parties among them, has
proved useless. _They will not fight_, and thirty thousand men cannot
find them, broken up as they are into small parties. What then is to be
done? Protect the inhabitants of the frontiers, gradually push the
Indians south, and at no distant day, the necessary, unavoidable and
melancholy consummation must arrive, viz., the expulsion of the last
tribe of red men from the soil over which they once roamed the sole
lords and possessors."

_30th_. The oldest man in the Ottawa nation, a chief called
Nish-caud-jin-in-a, or the Man of Wrath, died this day at L'Arbre
Croche, Michigan. He was between ninety and one hundred years of age,
withered and dry, and slightly bent, but still preserving the outlines
of a man of strength, good figure, and intellect. What a mass of
reminiscences and elements of history dies with every old person of
observation, white or red.

_Feb. 4th_. Mr. James H. Lanman writes respecting the prospects of his
publishing a history of Michigan--a subject which I gave him every
encouragement to go forward in, while he lived in that State. The theme
is an ambitious one, involving as it does the French era of settlements,
and the day for handling it effectively has not yet arrived. But the
sketches that may be made from easily-got, existing materials, may
subserve a useful purpose, with the hope always that some new fact may
be elicited, which will add to the mass of materials. "I have been
delayed here," he says, "in preparing the book, and the delay has been
occasioned by my publishers having failed. It is now, however,
stereotyped, and will be out in about a fortnight." [92]

[Footnote 92: He afterwards re-cast the work, and it was published by the
Harpers as one of the volumes of their library.]

_21st_. Mr. Bancroft writes to me, giving every encouragement to bring
forward before the public my collections and researches on Indian
history and language