90 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Aris^ and Letters. 



who exchanged Boston for the Black Hills before one miner had 

 pushed into their fastnesses. His strongest youthful passion was 

 to share in unaltered Indian life, and his loudest cry was : " Sav- 

 agery, with all thy lacks I love thee still !" 



Preference for Indian life has grown up even in Yankee captives, 

 and, what is most surprising, in females. . 



A well-known instance was the daughter of Williams — the 

 Massachusetts minister — who refused to be redeemed from cap- 

 tivity in a Canadian tribe. Some will suggest that having been 

 brought up in a parsonage of grim and vinegar aspect, she 

 thought nothing could be more repulsive than a Puritan strait- 

 jacket. But many similar instances occurred during Bouquet's 

 expedition west of the Ohio, which was undertaken in order to 

 rescue whites from Indian bondage. Several women, and those 

 not of ministerial families at all, when compelled to return to 

 white settlements, soon made their escape to the woods, prefer- 

 ring wigwams to their native homes. No thrice-driven bed of 

 down was so soft to them as a couch which, as their phrase was, 

 had never been made up since the creation. Many captive men^ 

 when given up to Bouquet, and bound fast to prevent their es- 

 cape, sat sullen and scowling that they were forced back into 

 society. 



In civilized society there was no sweet savor of romance for 



"A wild and wanton herd, 

 Or race of youthful and unhandled colts." 



No wonder, then, adventurers into the great west, who would 

 rather be scalped at Mackinaw than live in Montreal, became a 

 permanent class. No wonder when La Salle, first of white men, 

 had burst into the heart of Illinois, six of his soldiers deserted, 

 and that as many more of his little band had ran away in the far 

 north. One of these last absconders was encountered by Henne- 

 pin in the wilds of Minnesota. Another in that region was a run- 

 away from Hennepin himself. Nothing less than throwing them- 

 selves overboard from all social restraints could give scope for 

 that superabundant vitality which philosophers hold is pre- 

 eminently a French characteristic. 



