1840. _Jan. 1st_. Having determined to pass another winter (some ten
weeks of which are past) at Mackinack, I have found my best and
pleasantest employment in my old resource, the investigation of the
Indian character and history. The subject is exhaustless in every branch
of inquiry, but the more it is turned over and sifted, the more cause
there is to see that there is error to be encountered at almost every
step. Travelers have been chiefly intent on the picturesque, and have
given themselves but little trouble to investigate. The historian has
had his mind full of prepossessions derived from ancient reading, and
has, generally, been seated three thousand miles across the water, where
the work of personal comparison was impossible. Left to the repose of
himself, mentally and physically, without being placed in the crucible
of war, without being made the tool of selfishness, or driven to a state
of half idiocy by the use of liquor, the Indian is a man of naturally
good feelings and affections, and of a sense of justice, and, although
destitute of an inductive mind, is led to appreciate truth and virtue as
he apprehends them.
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