NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 77 



buildings aud outhouses were tliose of Mr. John Johnston, 

 and the group formerly occupied by the Northwest Company. 

 Most of the French habitations stood in the midst of picketed 

 lots. There were about forty or fifty lodges, or two hundred 

 Chippewas, fifty or sixty of whom were warriors. But, al- 

 though this j)lace was originally occupied as a missionary centre, 

 by the Eoman Catholic missionaries of New France, about the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, no trace of the ancient church 

 could be seen, unless it was in an old consecrated graveyard, 

 which has continued to be used for interments. Mr. Johnston, 

 the principal inhabitant, is a native of the County of Antrim, 

 Ireland, where his connections are persons of rank. He is a polite, 

 intelligent, and well-bred man, from a manifestly refined circle ; 

 who, soon after the close of the American Revolution, settled here, 

 and married the daughter of a distinguished Indian chief* Al- 

 though now absent on a visit to Europe, his family received us 

 with marked urbanity and hospitality, and invited the gentlemen 

 composing the travelling family of Governor Cass to take all our 

 meals with them. Everything at this mansion was done with 

 ceremonious attention to the highest rules of English social life ; 

 Miss Jane, the eldest daughter, who had received her education 

 in Ireland, presiding. 



* IxTER-EuKOPEAN AMALGAMATION. — Jolin Johnston TYas a native of the north 

 of Ireland, where his family possessed an estate called " Craige," near the cele- 

 brated Giant's Causeway. He came to this country during the first Presidential 

 term of Washington, and settled at St. Mary's, about 1793. He was a gentleman 

 of taste, reading, refined feeling, and cultivated manners, which enabled him to 

 direct the education of his children, an object to which he assiduously devoted him- 

 self; and his residence was long known as the seat of hospitality and refinement to 

 all who visited the region. In 1814, his premises were visited, during his absence, 

 by a part of the force who entered the St. Mary's, under Colonel Croghan, and his 

 private property subjected to pillage, from a misapprehension, created by some 

 evil-minded persons, that he was an agent of the Northwest Company. Genial, 

 social, kind, and benevolent, his society was much sought, and he was sometimes 

 imposed on by those who had been received into his employments and trusts (as in 

 the reports which carried the American^ to his domicil in 1814). He died at St. 

 Mary's, in 1828, leaving behind, among his papers, evidence that his leisure hours 

 were sometimes lightened by literary employments. Mr. Johnston, by marrying the 

 daughter of the ruling chief of this region, placed himself in the position of another 

 Rolfe. Espousing, in Christian mai-riage, the daughter of Wabjeeg, he became the 

 son-in-law of another Powhatan ; thus establishing such a connection between the 

 Hibei'nian and Chippewa races, as the former had done between the English and 

 Powhetanic stocks. 



