Historic Diaries: James Doty, 1820
June 12, 1820: Schoolcraft, on Mackinac's Indian Residents
Editor's Note:
Schoolcraft saw the Indians of Mackinac as an outsider, through the preconceptions of an educated, white soldier. In contrast, Elisabeth Therese Baird (nee Fisher), who grew up at Mackinac, had both Ottawa and white forebears and left a much more accurate and richly detailed account of Indian life there, from the inside. She described the multicultural mix of different tribes, French fur traders, and American soldiers particularly well, especially the roles of women and girls in the metis community. You can read her memoir here. For an account of the women in her family and metis life at Mackinac, see also this article about her grandmother, "Therese Schindler of Mackinac" in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
What Schoolcraft did not know in 1820 was that he would marry into one of the most important of these "savage" families, and that they would welcomehim, educate him, and provide him iwth much of the content for the books he would write.
Ramsay Crooks (1787-1859) and other fur traders are described in "John Lawe, Green Bay Trader" in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Location: Mackinac Island, Mich.
View original page in Schoolcraft's 1821 Narrative
The etymology of the word Michilimackinac admits of a ready explanation. It is a compound of the word missi or missil, signifying "great," and mackinac the Indian word for "turtle," from a fancied resemblance of the island to a great turtle lying upon the water. These are words of the Chippeway language...
Since our arrival here, there has been a great number of Indians of the Chippeway and Ottaway tribes, encamped near the town. The beach of the lake has been constantly lined with Indian huts and bark canoes... These savages resort to the island for the purpose of exchanging their furs for blankets, knives, and other articles. Their visits are periodical, being generally made after their spring and fall hunts, and their stay is short. Some of the tribes also bring in for sale several articles of Indian manufacture, particularly a kind of rush mat of a very handsome fabric, bark baskets filled with maple sugar, called moke-ocks, with quilled mockasins, shot pouches, and other fancy goods of Indian fabric, which are generally in demand as articles of curiosity...
The Indian trade is chiefly conducted by the American, or South West Fur Company, under the direction of Messrs. [Robert] Stuart and [Ramsay] Crooks. Indeed the warehouses, stores, offices, boat yards and other buildings of this establishment, occupy a considerable part of the town plat, and the company furnishes employment to a great number of clerks, engagés and mechanics, and contributes very largely to the general business, activity, and enterprise of the town. The trade and operations of this company are confined principally to the northwestern territories of the United States...
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