Editor's Note:
The expedition was detained at the Ojibwe camp all day by high winds. Schoolcraft, like Doty, wrote less than usual but provided a bit more detail about the region:
"There is very little in the appearances of the country in the vicinity of our encampment, to compensate for our delay. A sandy plain stretches along the shore of the lake as far as the eye can reach. The highlands of the Ontonagon are visible towards the south, and the Porcupine mountains at the distance of thirty miles west, appear to rise out of the lake, and imprint their lofty and rugged outlines upon the distant clouds. Towards the north there is an interminable expanse of water, without a solitary island to variegate the view. Letting the eye fall upon the immediate vicinity of our camp, the Indian village appears on the opposite side of the river, and we are surrounded on all sides by a bed of loose sand, which the wind is continually drifting into heaps. There is not a pebble upon the shore, nor a stratum of rock within a dozen miles."
He also commented on the pigeons and game: "While encamped here, pigeons have been very plenty, and vast numbers have been killed, some with sticks and stones. The Indians have also supplied us with sturgeon from the fishery, both fresh and dried, and with a part of the bear which they entrapped, but the latter, being in poor order, and a male, had not possessed that flavour for which young bear's meat killed in the proper season, is generally relished."
Location: somewhat west of Ontonagon, Mich.
View Doty's handwritten manuscript of this page
View page in the 1895 printed edition
View the original page in Schoolcraft's 1821 Narrative
Killed a great number of pigeons this morning. Strong wind ahead all day.
