■SOURCE OP ST. Peter's river. 79 



CHAPTER III. 



Description of Fort Wayne and its vicinity. Fur trade. 

 Potaivatomis. 



AT Fort Wayne we made a stay of three days, during 

 which our time was usefully and agreeably employed in 

 acquiring some information concerning the manners and 

 institutions of the Indian tribes which inhabit its vicinity. 

 To a person visiting the Indian country for the first time, 

 this place offered many characteristic and singular features. 

 The town or village is small ; it has grown under the shel- 

 ter of the fort, and contains a mixed and apparently very 

 worthless population. The inhabitants are chiefly of Cana- 

 dian origin, all more or less imbued with Indian blood. 

 Not being previously aware of the diversity in the charac- 

 ter of the inhabitants, the sudden change from an Ameri- 

 can to a French population, has a surprising, and to say the 

 least, an unpleasant effect ; for the first twenty -four hours, 

 the traveller fancies himself in a real Babel. The confu- 

 sion of languages, owing to the diversity of Indian tribes 

 which generally collect near a fort, is not removed by an 

 intercourse with their half-savage interpreters. The busi- 

 ness of a town of this kind differs so materially from that 

 carried on in our cities, that it is almost impossible to fancy 

 ourselves still within the same territorial limits; but the 

 disgust which we entertain at the degraded condition in 

 which the white man, the descendant of the European, ap- 

 pears, is perhaps the strongest sensation which we expe- 



