Business called me to Detroit, where I had a work in
the press, early in October. The Algic Society held its first
anniversary this day, in the Session Room of the Presbyterian Church.
The Secretary read a report of its proceedings, and submitted a body of
the vital statistics of the tribes of the Upper Lakes, which elicited an
animated discussion. Mr. Lathrop called attention to the singular fact,
that of the mothers reported in the tables, the rate of reproduction in
the hunter tribes did not exceed an average of over two children per
female. Mr. Sheldon thought the causes of their depopulation, since we
have been their neighbors, were rather seated in their extraordinary
attachment to the use of ardent spirits, than in the effects of wars,
internal or external. Mr. Clark believed the Indian youth were capable
of being brought under the power of moral and religious instruction. Mr.
Schoolcraft depicted the adverse circumstances under which the masses
had heretofore labored, in coming under plans of instruction and
Christianity, owing to their poverty; their dispersion over large areas
of country for large parts of the year; the impracticability of their
finding subsistence in large bodies at one place; and the deleterious
influence of the commerce in furs and peltries, on their moral and
mental character.
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