Part 1

Early Western Travels 1748–1846

Volume II

Early Western Travels 1748–1846 A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best and rarest contemporary Volumes of Travel, descriptive of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle and Far West, during the Period of Early American Settlement

Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by Reuben Gold Thwaites

Editor of “The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,” “Wisconsin Historical Collections,” “Chronicles of Border Warfare,” “Hennepin’s New Discovery,” etc.

Volume II John Long’s Journal, 1768–1782

[Illustration: [Logo]]

Cleveland, Ohio The Arthur H. Clark Company 1904

COPYRIGHT 1904, BY THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

=The Lakeside Press= R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

PREFACE. _The Editor_ 9 VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF AN INDIAN INTERPRETER AND TRADER, describing the Manners and Customs of the North American Indians; with an Account of the Posts situated on the River Saint Laurence, Lake Ontario, &c. April 10, 1768–Spring, 1782. _John Long_ Author’s Dedication 22 List of Subscribers 23 Author’s Preface 27 Voyages and Travels 33 Vocabulary English-Esquimeaux 223 English-Iroquois, Algonkin, Chippeway 224 English-Algonkin, Chippeway 238 English-Mohegan, Shawanee 250 English-Mohegan, Algonkin, Chippeway 252 English-Iroquois 254 English-French 257 English-Chippeway 259 Chippeway-English 289 Familiar Phrases: English-Chippeway 317

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME II

Facsimile (reduced) of original title-page 21 Map: “Sketch of the Western Countries of Canada, 1791.” _Facsimile of original_ 32

PREFACE

The second volume of our series of Early Western Travels is devoted to the reprint of John Long’s _Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader_, originally published in London in 1791.

Concerning Long, but little is known further than what he himself relates in his book. Coming from England to North America in 1768, he passed nearly twenty years upon this continent, chiefly consorting with the Indians—learning their languages, wearing their garb, living their life. An expert woodsman, fur-trader, and explorer, he penetrated into regions north and west of Canada, that are still practically unexplored.

At first an articled clerk in Canada, he later was apprenticed to a Montreal fur merchant. Having displayed an adaptability for Indian philology, Long was sent to the neighboring mission colony at Caughnawaga, where he remained seven years, becoming an adept in the arts and occupations of savage life. His term of service having expired, the excitements of army life attracted him. The American Revolution had just broken out, and volunteering for service with the British he was detailed to lead Indian parties to hang upon the flanks of the invading American army—one of these expeditions captured the famous Ethan Allen. After a year and a half of this service, in which—dressed as an Indian, and scalping his prisoners in their fashion—he could scarcely be distinguished from a brave, Governor Guy Carleton appointed Long a midshipman in the navy. But when his vessel sailed for England, he left the sea in order to enter upon the more lucrative business of fur-trading.

In May, 1777, Long left Montreal for Mackinac, engaged as a bourgeois to lead a party of voyageurs into the far Northwest, and trade with the Indians on their own hunting grounds. The independent Canadian merchants of this period were endeavoring to maintain the old French connections with the Indians of the “upper country,” and at the same time to undermine the trade of the Hudson’s Bay Company, by intercepting the natives before they reached the posts of the latter. Long was assigned to the Nipigon district north and northeast of Lake Superior—a region early occupied by the French, and the scene of their hardy and audacious enterprises against the Hudson Bay trade.

Cameron[1] defines the limits of this region as follows: “Bounded on the south by Lake Superior, on the southwest and west, by the northwest road from Lake Superior to the lower end of Lake Ouinipique (Winnipeg); on the northwest and north by Hayes river and part of Hudson Bay; and on the northeast by Hudson Bay. Its greatest length from Pierre Rouge (Red Rock), at the entrance of Nipigon River, to the Lake of the Islands, on the Hayes river, is about three hundred and fifty leagues and its greatest breadth, from Trout Lake to Eagle Lake, is about one hundred and eighty leagues, but in most parts not over eighty leagues. The two-thirds at least of this country are nothing but rivers and lakes, some fifty leagues long; properly speaking, the whole country is nothing but water and islands.” Into this watery wilderness Long and his voyageurs pushed their way, literally subsisting on the country. The bourgeois’s chief qualification for the enterprise was his familiarity with the Indian life and language, and the fact that he had undergone the ceremony of adoption by one of the most noted chiefs of the Chippewa nation.

During the French régime, this country was noted for producing the largest number and best quality of furs in the Northwest;[2] but after the English occupation the district had been nearly abandoned, the difficulties of existence proving too great. Four out of eight traders starved to death in the region in one year, and it was avoided in favor of the better-provisioned Western districts. Cameron says that in 1785 the whole district produced but fifty-six packs of furs. We may judge from this of Long’s success as a trader; in the first year, he not only subsisted himself and a party of eight Canadians, during the “hardest winter ever remembered,” but rescued a brother trader from destruction by a murderous band of Indians, and brought out a cargo of a hundred and forty packs of furs all in good condition, valued between $25,000 and $30,000. For these services he received from his chiefs the salary of $750 a year, and a supply of Indian corn and “hard grease,” or tallow, as provision.[3]

At the end of his first year’s engagement, Long returned only to Pays Plat, a trading station on Lake Superior. Being there relieved of his furs, and supplied with fresh provisions, he set out August 15, 1778, for another winter in the “inlands,” whither, after many hardships and experiences with murderous Indians, he returned to Mackinac, and spent the following winter with the Chippewas near that fort.

In June, 1780, he joined a party of Canadians and Indians who were sent from Mackinac to Prairie du Chien to secure the deposits of furs at the latter place, and prevent them from falling into the hands of the emissaries of George Rogers Clark from the Illinois, and the Spaniards from St. Louis. After a march through Wisconsin, this undertaking was successfully accomplished—the furs that could not be saved being burned to keep them from the enemy.[4]

The following autumn, Long returned to Quebec never again to come to the “upper country.” He made one more successful trading expedition to unknown lands, by way of the Saguenay River and Lake St. John, penetrating the country east of Hudson Bay, and bringing back a rich cargo—in the very year that the Hudson’s Bay Company was pillaged by the French expedition of La Pérouse.

Long returned for a year to England, his mother-land being entirely strange to him after fifteen years’ absence. He was, therefore, glad to fit out a cargo for another venture in the Indian trade of Canada. But his good fortune seems now to have deserted him—debt, lack of employment, and other difficulties drove him from one place to another. In the spring of 1785 he was in New York, where he pushed the claim of a Huron Indian through Congress. A fur-trading expedition among the Iroquois failed, and the British commandant at Oswego confiscated his goods. Taking refuge among his Loyalist friends near Kingston, he received a grant of land for his services, but debt drove him from that; and after securing some assistance from the authorities, he returned to England in the fall of 1788,[5] there to write and publish the volume of his adventures.

He appears to have secured some patronage for this work, as is evidenced by the list of subscribers, and the dedication to Sir Joseph Banks. He also consulted the best available authorities on Indian traditions and Canadian history, and seems to have taken pains to verify his own experiences and observations, without slavishly following his authorities.[6] In his defense of the Hudson’s Bay Company, there is to be noted either a desire to secure its favor for future services, or pique in relation to the new North West Company, under some one of whose partners he had undoubtedly served. The book, which was published in 1791, attained considerable popularity. It was favorably reviewed in the _Monthly Review_ (June, 1792), and translated into both French and German. The French translation, made by J. B. L. J. Billecocq, with notes by the translator (but without the vocabularies, a fact deplored by French philologists),[7] appeared in 1794, and again in 1810. Two German translations were made, the first by B. Gottlob Hoffmann, issued in 1791; the second by G. Forster, published in Berlin the following year.

The interest of the work, aside from incidental historical references to expeditions in Canada and Wisconsin during the Revolution, the Loyalist settlements, and the retention of the Northern posts, lies in the author’s intimate knowledge of Indian life and customs, especially those of the more primitive and savage tribes of the North; and in the light he incidentally throws on the history of the fur-trade.[8]

It is anything but an engaging picture which Long paints of his Indian friends and companions—they are in the stage of downright savagery, debauched by contact with the dregs of civilization, learning its vices, appropriating its weapons, and dominating the whites by sheer force of numbers, and knowledge of the weakness and greed of the latter. A pleasant contrast is his account of the Canadian mission Indians; but even these proved their savagery during the American Revolution. Of their aboriginal customs, Long’s notices of totemism, religious rites and beliefs, courtship and marriage, social customs—games, dances, food, dwellings—habits of hunting, and physical and mental characteristics, are valuable because original and the result of immediate observation.

Scarcely less dark is the picture presented by Long, of the fur-trade and the traders. This was the period of unlicensed and almost ruinous competition between the great company at the North, and the independent merchants from Canada—the latter acting each for himself, with slight regard for the interest of the trade, the Indians, or the lesser employees.

The fur-trade under the French régime had been under strict surveillance. All traders were required to purchase a government license, and the products of their traffic were closely inspected. By the close of the French rule, even the lawless _coureurs de bois_—trading through the forest at will, and carrying their peltries to the English at Albany and Hudson Bay—had been quite largely suppressed, and brought into the service of the licensed traders.

After the conquest of New France, a period of cutthroat competition began. The English traders did not at first dare venture into the wilderness peopled with Indians faithful to the French; those who did, nearly paid the penalty with their lives (as witness Alexander Henry, at Mackinac). But after Pontiac’s War, and the gradual subsidence of Indian hostility, British traders from Montreal and Quebec began reaching out for this lucrative traffic, and a class of enterprising _entrepreneurs_ was developed, recruited chiefly from the ranks of Scotchmen. By them the fur-trade was pushed to its highest development, and the rivers, lakes, and fastnesses of the great Northwest discovered and explored in rapid succession. This work was done by such men as the Henrys, Ponds, Frobishers, Finlays, Camerons, McDonalds—and, greatest of all, Sir Alexander Mackenzie.

By 1780, they began to unite their fortunes, and a sixteen-share stock corporation was formed of the principal traders.[9] A conspiracy of the Indians in the same year, to massacre all the whites and pillage the posts, was discovered and averted; but by the following season a still more terrible scourge had begun. Smallpox appeared among the tribes in the Northwest, and spread so rapidly that hunting was but languidly carried on, and profits fell to the zero mark. To avert the chaos into which the trade seemed falling, the North West Company was established in 1783, for a term of five years. In 1787 its organization was perfected, and the corporate period of the Canadian fur-trade began; competitors were gradually bought out—union with the X Y Company occurring in 1805, and with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.

Long’s narrative, therefore, portrays conditions during the period of the free trader, responsible to no authority, exploiting the country and the natives for the largest immediate returns, without reference to the preservation of the hunting grounds or the protection of the hunters. The frightful debauchery of the Indians by means of traders’ rum, and the necessity for the use of laudanum to control their drunken excesses, are shown in full by Long in his simple narrative of events. The dangers, also, to which this system exposed the trader, are only too evident from his relation of the case of Mr. Shaw. As for the competition with the Hudson’s Bay Company, it is plain from Long’s narrative that the Canadian traders were encroaching on the hunting grounds of this great monopoly. The case of M. Jacques Santeron shows the possibility of dishonest men passing from one employ to the other.

As for the rest of the picture, Long presents the usual traits of the trader and interpreter—a certain rude honesty, taking the form of loyalty to his employer, a disregard of dangers, and small concern for hardships. His knowledge of wilderness life was intimate, but to this fact he alludes only in an incidental way. In acquaintance with Indian character, and power of influencing them in a crisis, he seems to have been superior to the ordinary trader. His vices were those of his class—slight regard for laws, either moral or military (witness the incident at Fort Mackinac), improvidence and wastefulness, restlessness, and dissatisfaction with the routine life of towns. His literary style, while discursive, is simple, and as clear as running water. What he wishes to say, he says plainly, leaving the reader as a rule to draw his own conclusions. There is an unvarnished, unflinching directness in his statements, conveying to the reader the impression that he is concealing nothing, doing nought for effect, but telling a straightforward story of travels and adventures. The book forms a contribution of note to this important class of literature, and will always be readable.

In the preparation of the notes, the Editor has had, as in the first volume of the series, the assistance of Dr. Louise Phelps Kellogg, of the Wisconsin Historical Library. He has also had helpful suggestions from Dr. James Bain, Jr., of the Toronto Public Library.

R. G. T.

MADISON, WIS., February, 1904.

LONG’S VOYAGES AND TRAVELS—1768–1782

Reprint of the original edition: London, 1791

[Illustration:

_VOYAGES AND TRAVELS_ OF AN INDIAN INTERPRETER AND TRADER, DESCRIBING _The Manners and Customs_ OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS; WITH _AN ACCOUNT OF THE POSTS_ SITUATED ON THE RIVER SAINT LAURENCE, LAKE ONTARIO, &c. TO WHICH IS ADDED,

A VOCABULARY OF The Chippeway Language. _Names of Furs and Skins, in English and French._

A LIST OF WORDS IN THE IROQUOIS, MOHEGAN, SHAWANEE, AND ESQUIMEAUX TONGUES, AND A TABLE, SHEWING _The Analogy between the Algonkin and Chippeway Languages_.

BY J. LONG.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR; AND SOLD BY ROBSON, BOND-STREET; DEBRETT, PICCADILLY; T. AND J. EGERTON, CHARING-CROSS; WHITE AND SON, FLEET-STREET; SEWELL, CORNHILL; EDWARDS, PALL-MALL; AND MESSRS. TAYLORS, HOLBORN, LONDON; FLETCHER, OXFORD; AND BULL, BATH.

M,DCC,XCI.

]

TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS, BAR^T. PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY,[10] &c. &c. &c.

SIR,

I feel the highest satisfaction in being permitted to dedicate this work to one whose pursuits have ever been more peculiarly directed to objects of originality, and whose scientific researches have contributed so largely to the information and benefit of society.

The public are too well acquainted with your general knowledge in every branch of literature, to suspect that I hold the language of adulation. Should I attempt to do justice to a character so eminently distinguished, my feeble efforts could only be regarded as the grateful effusions of a mind proud of a patronage that can ensure an especial share of public notice and protection.

I have the honour to be, very respectfully,

SIR, Your most obedient servant, J. LONG.

_London, February, 1791._

LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS

Addis, Mr. George. Annereau, Mr.

Banks, Sir Joseph, Bart. Beaufoy, Henry, Esq. M. P. Berens, Hermanus, Esq. Berens, Joseph, Esq. Boddam, Thomas, Esq. Bettesworth, Thomas, Esq. Baker, John, Esq. Baker, William, Esq. Baker, Miss. Batson, Robert, Esq. Baynes, Burdon, Esq. Blache, J. F. Esq. Belfour, John, Esq. Belfour, Mr. Okey. 3 copies. Belfour, Mr. J. D. Bird, William, Esq. Bird, Thomas, Esq. Bird, Michael, Esq. Barbe, St. Samuel, Esq. Barbe, St. John, Esq. Bingley, ——, jun. Esq. Bates, Mr. John. Birkley, Mr. John. Bowden, John, Esq. Brandon, Mr. Bull, Mr. J. Bath. Beilby, Mr. 6 copies.

Croft, the Rev. Herbert. Cornthwaite, the Rev. Mr. Chalmers, George, Esq. Culverden, William, Esq. Corsellis, Nicholas Cæsar, Esq. Coussmaker, John, Esq. Croix, N. D. St., Esq. Cleaver, Miss. Cotton, Thomas, Esq. Cotton, Bayes, Esq. Chandler, George, Esq. Coningham, William, Esq. Cope, Thomas, Esq. Cleugh, John, Esq. Clay, Felix, Esq. Clay, James, Esq. Clay, William, Esq. {iv} Clay, George, Esq. Cooper, Mr. Cooper, Mr. James. Corbet, ——, Esq. 2 copies.

Dawson, William, Esq.

Dalrymple, Alexander, Esq. Dicken, John, Esq.

Earle, James, Esq. Emes, William, Esq. Edwards, Charles, Esq. Etches, R. C., Esq. Eldridge, Thomas, Esq.

Fraser, Major. Finch, Thomas, Esq. Forbes, Thomas, Esq. Fayle, Benjamin, Esq. Faden, Mr. William. 6 copies. Fawler, Mrs. Forsteen, ——, Esq. Finch, Mr. John. Fletcher, Mr. James, Oxford.

Grote, George, Esq. Gould, Thomas, Esq. George, C. G., Esq. Goldthwaite, Thomas, Esq. George, Mr. Edward. Graft, Mr. James.

Hollingsworth, John, Esq. Hulse, Richard, Esq. Hulse, Edward, Esq. Howison, John, Esq. Lisbon. Hayward, Francis, Esq. 2 copies. Holden, Joseph, Esq. Haffey, John, Esq. Hill, Edward, Esq. Hussey, William Wheatley, Esq. Harper, Mrs. Hillier, Mr. Hale, Mr. Harry. 2 copies. Hill, Mr. John.

Jones, Edward, Esq. Jeudwine, Thomas, Esq. Justice, Mr. Richard. Jacks, Mr.

Knill, John, Esq. Kensington, Charles, Esq.

Long, Sir James Tylney, Bart. M.P. 7 copies. {v} Lake, Sir J. Winter, Bart. 4 cop. Langmore, William, Esq. Legg, Leaver, Esq. Long, Mrs. Locke, Miss. Locke, John, Esq. Lion, Thomas, Esq. Lane, Benjamin, Esq. Lang, Charles, Esq. Lightfoot, John, Esq.

Lonsdale, Mr.

Mulgrave, the Right Hon. Lord. Monsel, Lieutenant Colonel. Marsden, William, Esq. Morris, John, Esq. Martin, Captain. Man, Henry, Esq. 6 copies. Mukins, Francis, Esq. Malleson, John, Esq. Murray, Mr. J. 2 copies.

Nesbitt, Lieutenant Colonel. Nesbitt, Arnold, Esq. Nasmyth, Maxwell, Esq. Neave, Richard, Esq.

Prescott, George William, Esq. Pott, Rev. J. H. Archdeacon of St. Albans. Pott, Percival, Esq. Pott, E. H. Esq. Pott, Mrs. Powell, Baden, Esq. Powell, James, Esq. Powell, Thomas, Esq. Peck, Jasper, Esq. Pooley, John, Esq. Perry, John, Esq. Palmer, Peregrine, Esq. Pickwoad, Robert, Esq. Pickering, Thomas, Esq. Popplewell, Mr.

Roberts, John, Esq. Rennell, Major. Robertson, Captain. Ruspini, J. B., Esq. Rouse, Benjamin, Esq. Ross, G. W., Esq. 2 copies. Rutter, Miss. Row, William, Esq. Regail, Alexander, Esq. Reading Society, Hackney.

Scott, Thomas, Esq. M. P. {vi} Sneyd, Samuel, Esq. Symons, the Rev. Mr. Sheldon, John, Esq. Professor of Anatomy in the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and F. R. S. Shamier, ——, Esq. Stoe, Harry, Esq. Sedgwick, Harry, Esq. Stone, John Hurford, Esq. Surman, William, Esq. Smith, Haskett, Esq. Scafe, Mr. Richard. Scargill, Mr. James. Stable, Mr. William. Smith, Mr. Thomas.

Smith, Mr. J. Thomas.

Turner, Miss. Turner, Miss Jane. Tanner, N. Esq. Toulmin, William, Esq. Taylors, Messrs. 6 copies.

Vaston, Mrs. Vandriel, Mr. J. C.

Wegg, Samuel, Esq. Winter, John, Esq. Walker, John, Esq. Wilson, Stephen, Esq. Wilson, William, Esq. Wilcox, William, Esq. Wilcox, Edward, Esq. Wilcox, Mrs. Anne. Wickham, Lieut. Woolhead, Major, Esq. Wright, Mr. Thomas. Watson, Mr. William. White, Messrs. and Son. 6 copies.

Young, Mrs.

PREFACE

The reader will naturally expect some account of this work.

With regard to the historical part, I have endeavoured to explain the situation of the Posts, which, by Mr. Oswald’s Treaty, were stipulated to be surrendered to the Americans; and pointed out their convenience to Great Britain in a political and commercial point of view:[11] I have also given a description of the Five and Six Nation Indians; and endeavoured to shew the usefulness, as well as necessity, of a strict alliance with them as long as we retain any possessions in Canada.

With respect to the descriptions of lakes, rivers, &c. which lie beyond Lake Superior, from Lake Nipegon to Lake Arbitibis, I have given them as accurately as possible, either from my own knowledge, or the most authentic Indian accounts; and when it is considered that interpreters in the commercial line seldom have occasion for any geographical knowledge, the want of better information will be excused.

The Vocabulary which is subjoined, and on which I have bestowed some pains, it is hoped will not only afford information to such as may be desirous of attaining a knowledge of the Chippeway language, but prove useful to those who are already engaged in traffic with the Indians.

{viii} As the mode of spelling a language which has never been reduced to a grammatical system, must be arbitrary, and principally depend on the ear, I have endeavoured to use such letters as best agree with the English pronunciation; avoiding a multiplicity of consonants, which only perplex: and to enable the reader to speak so as to be understood by the natives, it is necessary to observe that _a_ is generally sounded broad; and _e_ final never pronounced but in monosyllables.

The following are the motives which induced me to make the Vocabulary in the Chippeway language so copious.

In the first place it is, strictly speaking, one of the mother tongues of North America, and universally spoken in council by the chiefs who reside about the great lakes, to the westward of the banks of the Mississippi, as far south as the Ohio, and as far north as Hudson’s Bay; notwithstanding many of the tribes, within the space of territory I have described, speak in common a different language.—This observation is confirmed by authors of established repute, and further proved by the concurrent testimony of the Indian interpreters.

Baron de Lahontan[12] asserts that the Algonkin is a mother tongue, and that it is in as much estimation in North America, as Greek and Latin in Europe: this being admitted, I am persuaded the Chippeway language possesses as much, if not greater merit, as it is in every respect better understood by the northwest Indians. But as the knowledge of both {ix} may not only be useful, but necessary, I have given a comparative table of about two hundred and sixty words in both tongues, that the reader may use either as he shall find it best understood by the tribes with whom he may have occasion to trade; though he will find, in a variety of instances, a perfect accordance.

The table of words in the Muhhekaneew, or Mohegan, and Shawanee tongues, are extracted from the Rev. Mr. Edwards’s publication, and are inserted to shew their analogy with the Chippeway language;[13] and, as he observes that the language of the Delawares in Pennsylvania, of the Penobscots on the borders of Nova Scotia, of the Indians of St. Francis, in Canada, of the Shawanees on the Ohio, and many other tribes of Savages radically agree, I judged the tables of analogy would not be unacceptable.

In the course of the historical part, several speeches in the Chippeway language are introduced: and at the end of the Vocabulary, a number of familiar phrases, which not only serve to shew the mode of speech, but give a better idea of the language than single words.