Oct. 10, 190;^.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
^81 
years, wliile similar experiences gain from us but slight 
permanent notice, remaining as a partial blur on the 
memory, those early first impressions are retained in their 
original distinctness, and come back to us at our bidding 
in the revival of the long ago which comes with the re- 
turn of home week; and so we again see our early home, 
meet the friends of other years and once more hear 
familiar voices which have long been silent, but are not 
forgotten. 
A View of Maine. 
Malden, Mass., Sept. 25. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
The smell of frc^t and the rustling leaves makes me 
think of Maine. But shall I go? I see that our friend 
Kinney, of Worcester, says that the Worcester gunners 
are going to New Brunswick instead of Maine. As near 
as I can learn what is true of Worcester is true of the 
rest of the State. Perhaps from no city of its size in 
Massachusetts has there been so large a delegation of 
hunters to Maine as from Maiden ; but this year it is 
different. I can count with the fingers of one hand all 
who have expressed their intention of going; but there 
is now a large number in New Brunswick, with two par- 
ties to start this week. I am a native of Maine, but I 
must admit that for the first time I am a little ashamed 
to own it. They have an impression that we have got 
to have their .scam.e, but we will let them see. We will 
let them run their empty trains ; we will let the farmer 
and storekeeper keep their potatoes and their groceries. 
We will let the guide wait at the wharf and the station 
for his patrons, from whom he has decided that his ser- 
vices are worth four dollars per day, but who_ is content 
to w-ork the balance of the season in the logeing swamp 
for $25 per month. E. M. W. 
Five "Wagfon Loads of Minnesota Dtfcfcs. 
St. Paul, Minn., Sept. 30. — ^The State Game_ and Fish 
Commission received word yesterday morning from 
Jackson, Minn., that five wagonloads of ducks which 
were shipped from Heron Lake out of the State were 
seized near the Iowa line. The seizure was made by 
Capt. Bird, a member of the Commission. The Commis- 
sion has had a great deal of trouble protecting its game 
in the vicinitv of Heron Lake, and the seizure is re- 
garded as a very important one. 
Last year this gang was broken up, but they are at it 
again, with ten men employed and each to average 100 
cnnvasbacks or redheads per day. 
Charles Christadoro. 
All communicatiors intended for Forbst and Strbam shmild 
always he addressed to the Porest and Stream PuWishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individual connected with Ihe paper. 
The Game Laws in Brief. 
is the standard authority of fish and game laws of the United 
States and Canada. It tells everything and gives it corrrctlv. 
.•^ee in advertising pages list of some of the dealers who handle 
the Brief. 
Musings at Sand Lake, Mfchfgan. 
in. — A Glance at Som"- Fragments of its Indian History 
and the March on Toledo from Tecomsch, in 1836. 
"On Marquetuas' flowery marge. 
The red chief's wigwam stood, 
Before the white man's ^ifle rang 
Loud through the echoing wood. 
The tomahawk and scalping knife 
T-ogether lay at rest; 
And peace was in the forest shades 
And in the red man's breast." 
1 — Michigan School Ballad. 
At least a few drops of the wild, savage blood of 
primeval 'man remain in every sportsman, no matter 
how "cultured" he may be — the slave of conventionality 
and civilization, the busy user of the trolley, telephone, 
and limited railway train, the stock-ticker and wireless 
message. He may scamper over Europe and stare at 
the "old masters" in a dozen galleries, eat elaborate 
course dinners at the Cecil in London, or the Waldorf 
in New York, and chat with the Boston savant about 
Psj'chic Research as he speeds in the automobile along 
Commonwealth avenue; but there is that inside of him 
which sometimes calls for life in the tent; for tlie camp- 
fire, the noonday lunch of roasted fish beside lake or 
stream, the sighing of winds through woods, and the 
whispers of waves on beaches as they tell their story to 
its rocks and pebbles. 
So the angler here at Snml Lake will not only note 
all these factors of Nature's hypn'->tism, but will dream 
of what the savage life must ha\ e been in that long ago 
when the Stone Age man or the dusky Indian belle 
fished here, and watched this panorama of bluflts, woods, 
waters and flowers. What manner of men were those 
old lake-dwellers? Did they have a religion? And what 
were its rites? Did they have a language of their own? 
What did they eat and wear, and how did they secure 
it? 
These, and a hundred other queries, will grow in 
interest, until he may search the libraries, question aged 
jesidents, write dozens of letters, read the journals de- 
voted to American Folk Lore, and mourn over the 
scanty and meagre facts, and that the legends and tra- 
■ditions are nearly always so fantastic and unreliable. 
And here at Sand Lake, nearly every mail brings to 
us some new proof that almost nothing is known of 
the life of the red men of this region. The Pioneer and 
Historical Society, with rooms and a library at Lan- 
sing, has published thirty volumes relating to Michigan 
history; and it has a few unverified old manuscripts of 
interest; but few real messages come from that olden 
time. Almost the only real facts.have been obtained by 
personal conversations with old residents, who tell the 
stories of the red men as told to t^iem by the aged 
white memsfhen they were boys. Special acknowledg- 
ment is here made of the service and courtesy to us in 
this matter, extended by the octogenarian, Mr. Charles 
F. Dewey, of Cambridge, who came to Lenawee county 
in 1829, and who is yet hale and hearty. 
The writer does not vouch for the authenticity of the 
legends given here; taken from books that cite no real 
authority for them. But the facts furnished by three or 
four old citizens as having been handed down to them 
from their fathers and friends, are fairly authentic — 
always subject, however, to the objection that it is next 
to impossible for any man to relate Indian "history" 
without "romancing." 
The earliest known Indian history of the Sand Lake- 
Prospect Hill — Tecumseh region seems to begin about 
1735, when a sub-tribe of the Algonquins had villages at 
h 
A NOONTIDE LUNCH. 
Sand, Devil's, Wolf, and Allen's lakes. Some of the 
names of their chiefs were Man in the Clouds, Tall 
Chimney, Black Wolf, Comes by Water, Blue Cloud, 
and Maize Grower. These names purport to be trans- 
lations from the Algonquin equivalents for them. 
About 1775 this sub-tribe, which extended at least as 
far as Morrison's Lake, near Coldwater, south to 
Angola, Indiana, east to the Detroit River, and north 
to Long Lake in Genesee county, were decimated by 
the smallpox, which had been brought by a Wyandotte 
Indian from what is now Lake St. Clair. The differ- 
ent villages established a partial quarantine against the 
disease. A famine followed, and in the war that re- 
sulted from the non-observance of the quarantine, the 
region was left with almost no survivors. 
This handful of Algonquins became a part of the 
comparatively numerous tribe that came into the region 
about 1800, and known as the Pottowottomies. They 
certainly had one village near Sand Lake, and one be- 
tween Wolf and Allen's Lakes in 1815. The chief in 
charge was named Meteaugh, a tall, thin Indian, who 
had a wigwam of birch bark imported from "across 
thundery midnights at the top of the "wadichu," or 
what is now Prospect Hill. He claimed power to talk 
with the bears, wolves, foxes, wildcats and catamounts, 
then plentiful there. He made a monthly (moon) jour- 
ney to see a sister who lived near White Pigeon, and 
followed a "trail" through what is now Addison, 
VVheatland, Joncsville, Coldwater and Sturgis. The 
tribe had buna! places near Tecumseh, and near Siam, 
and another on Section Eleven of Cambridge Town- 
ship, Lenawee county. The remnant of this sub-tribe 
was removed to some reservation, and their villages 
were abandoned in 1830. 
Their burials are said to have taken place at dawn, 
the corpse being placed with the head to' the rising 
sun. Some grains of the corn from their scant fields, 
a small piece of deer meat, a deer bladder full of 
water, a knife, bow, two arrows, and a tomahawk, were 
buried with a warrior. Squaws were buried with the 
head to the west, and with nothing, it would seem, to 
help them bv way of food or weapons when they 
reached the "happy hunting grounds." 
They worshipped the Great Spirit, who lived above 
the stars and kept a sleepless vigil over all. They as- 
sembled once a month (moon) and faced in a body to 
the cast before a fire of birch, and sacrificed deer meat 
to this deity. They had wordless songs of reverence 
and entreaty, which contained prayers for the ill, and 
for success during the hunt, and in war. These songs 
were carefully taught to their young men, and handed 
down by an official "Wiladtcuppen," or song-keeper. 
They often endowed the largest trees with a personality 
that was supernatural, and under them the tents and 
"shacks" were sometiuies placed. At Wolf Lake was 
a supposed snake, about forty feet long, which had to 
be placated with offerings of birds and meat — a water 
deity. 
Their language was a patois of the Algonquin. Here 
is a list that was taken down in 1810, of a few of their 
words, by a settler or trapper named Ross, who 
camped and hunted at the "hill" (Prospect) lakes, and 
whose great grandson, Mr. C. W. Marshfield, now 
nearly seventy years old, handed to me here in New 
York last year: 
Fish .-. Pabsi 
Canoe Molchu 
Lake Poagan 
Great Spirit Manitou 
Woman (squaw) ,.Lapsi 
Muskrat Fubgro 
Bear Olachumli 
Deer Klabtowoli 
River Chumcatacat 
The list could be considerably extended. At best, it 
was merely the sounds, crudely written in English, as 
pronounced by Indians, to an unlettered, probably 
ignorant^ trapper. But some of the words show their 
Algonquin origin. For example, "pung" was a sled, 
pure Algonquin, as was "netomp," or "my friend." 
But I leave the subject for the antiquarians, merely 
stating that some of our best-known words come from 
the Algonquin language, as chipmunk, totem, terrapin, 
woodchuck, persimmon, porgy, coon, pone, and cau- 
carouse, or a head man — chieftain. 
But wc leave the subject — it is too obscure. 
ONE OF THE LANDINGS AT SAND LAKE. 
the flowing water," Canada. He had from six to a 
dozen wives, was left-handed, smoked dried leaves, 
and carried an eagle's wing pendant from a wampum 
belt, as a symbol of his rank. His royal head-dress 
was made of untanned buckskin sewed with deer- 
thongs; his moccasins alone were stained red with 
cokeberry juice, and his was the only canoe at Sand 
Lake which was entitled to two paddles — the chief's 
prerogative. 
He had charge of the village for about twenty-five 
years, and was succeeded by "Siam," a lazy, dirty ■ 
tribesman, who had "cured" diseases by making signs, 
mumbling incantations, and pouring deer blood and 
the dry gratings of wild turnip moistened with cherry 
juice, down the throats of his ill victims. He had a 
bow of ebon arrows tipped with rattlesnake poison, 
and claimed that he had frequent talks with Manitou. 
the Great Spirit, who visited him under an oak tree on 
One well authenticated custom was the forcible car- 
rying from her wigwam of any Indian girl whom a 
brave desired for a wife. In Siam's village at Sand 
Lake as late as 1815, a girl so seized killed her assailant 
with a single blow of a tomahawk. But even when a girl 
desired to be the wife of her abductor, she kicked and 
squalled and resisted as if that were the last thing she 
wished. Women, savage and civilized, often have this 
trait. 
Even in 1829 the Siam village was little more than a 
camp of squalid Indians, dependent on the bounty of 
tl:e Government. Thei"- started for Maiden, with others 
from the West, in August of that year. Mr. Dewey, 
the old resident of Cambridge, writes me that "on 
their return thej' stopped on the trail that passed our' 
house (about 400 of them), having blankets, guns, 
shoes and coats, but especially considerable money, 
and more whisky in deer bladders. They were very 
