I think they weighed 234 b. and brought Ten Guineas, you have annex [ed] a list of those of yours brought, I presume the Emperor is with you ere this; by whom I sent your Invoice, the Goods, left Lachine on 6th, and make no doubt are pass'd Kingston there is no doubt but muskrats will sell well, as there was only 44.000 shipped last year from this, and they are paying 20d and upward in N Yk. for them, the Beaver I think will also sell well owing to the quantity M' Astor shipd [sic] from N Yk being lost, I did not write you last week by the HB. Canoes as they were loaded, this is reserved for the first light Canoe.

The Enclosd came to hand last week if any thing should occour [sic] I shall add a post cript [sic], mean time believe me truly

Yours faithfully

David David

P. S. the Botes [sic] which took up your goods is [sic] just returned from Kingston, they unloded [sic] your goods into the Steam Boat, of course is at Queenston ere this

NOTES FOR MEMOIR OF MRS. HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT BY HENRY
ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT.63

[Smithsonian-Schoolcraft Papers-Scrapbook I.]

Notes intended to be used in drawing up a biographical notice, or memoir of
Mrs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

When I mentioned to you, I should be pleased to furnish you some sketches of Mrs S. I thought it would be a means of diverting me, and at the same [time] furnish you, perhaps, with the foundation of some remarks on the applicability of e. and c. to the native Indian family, But I hardly dreamt, I should permit so much time, to pass but, in truth, I have been rambling over half Europe and I was at Notly Hill, and it is not without some ado, that I sit down to draw my thoughts together.65 To understand the true position in society occupied by Mrs. Schoolcraft, it is necessary to advert to her parentage. Her father, the late John Johnston Esq of St Mary's Falls, was from the north of Ireland, where he possessed an estate near the Giant's Causeway, and was respectably connected. The family, as he informed me, were, at a remote period from Scotland, and the particular branch settled in Ireland was directly descended from connections with the family of Leathes of Bury St Edmonds and Mussenden of Herringfleet Hall Norfolk. His father was a naval officer at the siege of Louisbourg and afterwards held a post in the Customs at Port Rush Ireland, and died at middle age. Mr Johnston his eldest son, owed the superintendence of his educa [tion] to his mother (a McNeil) had designed pushing his fortune in India, but was discouraged by Lord Macartney, to whom he applied, and took letters for Sir Alured Clarke the Governor General of Canada at Quebec, by whom he was well received, and offered a grant of land in Acadia; but not exactly liking the location, and at the same time, meeting with Mr Tod, an Irish gentlemen of enterprize who had the direction or at least, a prominent interest, of the Fur trade in the North West, he was induced to proceed to Michilimackinac, and after a year or two, spent on lake Superior, he settled at the Sault, or Falls of St Mary's about 1793. To this place he brought the daughter of Waubojeeg a noted war chief and civil ruler

68A. D.

"Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860), the English authoress, passed a portion of her time in Canada, 1837-1838, and while visiting the Sault formed the acquaintance of Mrs. Schoolcraft, to whom she was much attracted, both on account of her literary tastes and her Indian origin. Cf. Mrs. Anna B. Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838). (J. S. F.)

"It was during Schoolcraft's absence in Europe in 1842, that his wife died. The Notes were probably written before his return or just afterwards. (J. S. F.)

of the Chippewa, or more correctly, Odjibwa Tribe. He baptized her by the name of Susan, and having previously taken her, from her father, according to the Indian mode of marriage, he subsequently complied with the English ritual at the neighboring port of St. Joseph's, and to these double obligations, he faithfully adhered, and, by her, had a family of eight children, four males and four females, all of whom lived, and were raised to maturity. For their sakes, he finally gave up the idea of a return to Ireland, and through his connections, became extensively known and much respected by the northern tribes, and exercised a favourable influence upon him.

Jane, (Mrs Schoolcraft) was his eldest daughter, and was born January 31st 1800. Her father very naturally, became her earliest instructor, and directed her reading, and from him she derived, that purity of language, correct pronunciation, and propriety of taste and manners, which distinguished her. Under his direction she perused some of the best historians, the lives of Plutrarch [sic] the spectator and British essayists generally with the best dramatists and poets. And under his delicate and well timed commendations and criticisms, she not only acquired more than the ordinary proficiency in some of the branches of an English education but also a correct judgment and taste in literary merit. He made it a rule to excite her to throw all her energies into whatever little effort, or essay, she undertook, and thus always to be doing her best— At an early age, he took her with him to Ireland, and placed her with her aunt Mrs Moore of Wexford, under whom she profited in many lessons of female etiquette, of which, she always retained the most perfect remembrance. With Mrs Moore, it was destined she should permanently remain, and be the inheritor of her property. This design was, however, frustrated by the sudden death of Mr Moore, from a stroke of appoplexy [sic], while Mr Johnston was in Ireland, and she desired to see her mother, and she plead so well with him, for a return to America, that, he told me, he could not resist her persuasions. She had early imbibed pious sentiments, and these were greatly strengthened, and furthered by the conversation of her Irish friends, particularly her aunt and uncle, the Reverend Mr and Mrs Kearney of (at that period) Delganny and by the works of Hannah More and other authors of the day. A miniature taken of her during this visit is deemed a[n] excellent likeness, although in compliance with the fashion of the day, for little girls [while at] her relatives in Dublin, (Mrs Saurins)" she had been shorn of her fine head of hair. On the home route from Quebec to St Mary's, her father was impressed

Wife of Bishop Saurin of Dromore. (J. S. F.)

with the pleasure she appeared to derive from the scenery of her native country (always a strong point of admiration with her) but when, in crossing the Niagara ridge, in the route from Queenston to Fort Erie, she saw the pine, she could not resist the expression of impassioned admiration. "There pa! see those pines!" she explaimed, "after all I have seen abroad, you have nothing equal to the dear pine." At a later period, I asked her if she could not recal[1] her feelings at the moment, on which he gave me some lines in the Indian language, of which, you will find a translation appended. At Detroit Mr J. and his d. were kindly received by Gov. Hull and his intelligent family. On reaching Machilimackinac, it was the beginning of October. Winter, in all its rigour [sic], was about to set in; and the ordinary means of reaching St Mary's, was wanting. At this juncture Major Howard, the American officer commanding at Mackinac, very handsomely fitted out a boat, manned with soldiers, and sent them into the [sic] river St Mary's. They were met, at the Sailor's Encampment, by a boat dispatched by Mrs Johnston. in search of them. She, by the impulse of what is termed Un watch e ga, had fancied them near, and sent off the boat, at daylight. Major Howard's boat returned from this point, Mr J. and his daughter safely reached home, that day and the next morning the river was closed with ice, nor did it open again till spring.

Those extraordinary men, Elksatawa or the Shawnee prophet, and his brother Tecumsah [sic], were at this time in the height of their fame among the Indian tribes, and agitated them, with the expectation of some great deliverance, to the utmost bounds of lake Superior and the sources of the Mississippi. The war of 1812 followed, and, before the close of 1814, it involved Mr Johnston and his family very deeply in its consequences. By success as an outfitter for the Fur trade, or merchantin-chief, he had acquired a handsome property, and was meditating a retirement to the vicinity of Montreal, where he could better perform the duties he owed to his rising family, when the war began. In the summer of 1814 a large detachment of American troops under the command of Major Holmes, came up the river in boats, and, after burning down the buildings of the North West Company, crossed over to the W. side of the river, and completely sacked and pillaged his stores and dwelling house, not even leaving the smallest article of domestic convenience, and ransacking the bedrooms to the last article of female apparal [sic]. Mr Johnston was absent at the time, with his daughter Jane, at the island of Mackinac, which had been captured the year before, by a party

67

of regulars from St Joseph's, aided by a hastily raised local militia. Mrs Johnston, took her younger children, and fled, in haste, into lake Superior, where both she and they, nearly suffered starvation. The reason assigned for this incursion, was that Mr Johnston was a British subject, that he held a magistrate's commission from the Governor of Canada and had had [sic] exerted his influence in raising the Indian tribes, and leading them, personally, to the attack of Mackinac. Of his loyalty to the country of his birth, he never gave friend or foe reason to doubt, to the day of his death; but he owed this piece of petty vindictiveness to exaggerated and false representations, which had been made by low and envious neighbours, and especially by opponents in the fur Trade, who wished to see him crippled and humbled. These misrepresentations, it is but justice to say, the American officer, would have treated as they deserved, and spurned both the counsel and the act, had he seasonably known their true character As it was the act appeared vile an army plundering an individual. Goods and property to the amount of £10,000, were thus destroyed, besides losses in the business of an irreparable character, or carried away. But the hardest point of the case, was still to come. The Commissioners appointed under act of Parliament to ascertain and award the losses sustained in the war by citizens of Canada, rejected this claim of Mr Johnston's on the ground of the claimant's living south of the line of demarkation of the old treaty of 1783, without adverting to the fact, that that line, north of lake Huron, had never been enforced, and the still stronger fact, that the entire region had been conquered by the troops from St Joseph, and was then actually held by the garrison of Mackinac, and so continued, until the peace of Ghent, and was only restored by a clause of that Treaty. Nor has a farthing been paid on this claim, to the present day. An act of Mr Johnston's high and honorable character, occurred on the taking of Mackinac, in which he bore a part. The Indians, burning to signalize their triumph by American scalps, were in the act of sacraficing a peaceful non combatant trader, when he stepped forth, and in tones of just rebuke, sent back the Indians to their camp, and saved the man's life.

Miss Johnston was in the fort, with her father, at the moment the American army, under the command of Col Croghan, assailed the Island. It was the blunder of this attack, for the purpose of [recovering.] the Island, on the part of the American forces, that they landed on the back part of the island, three 11⁄2 miles from the fort, the point of attack, and separated from it, by thick low woods, affording the best possible shelter

67Cf. supra, Memoir of John Johnston and notes, for this and following incidents in connection with the war. (J. S. F.)