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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
The following from the pen of Gen. Lewis Cass in 1825 gives the views of a careful and intelligent observer who had enjoyed ample opportunity for study and personal observation: "From Hudson's bay to' Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Rocky mountains, the country was possessed by numerous petty tribes, resembling each other in their general features, and separated into independent communities, always in a state of alarm and suspicion and generally on terms of open hostility. These people were in the rudest state of society, wandering from place to place, without science, without arts, metalic instruments, or domestic animals; raising a little corn by the labor of their women, with the clam-shell or the scapula of a buffalo, devouring it with savage improvidence and subsisting during the remainder of the year on the precarious supply furnished by the chase or by fishing. They were thinly scattered over an immense extent of country, fixing their summer residence upon some little spot of fertile land and roaming with their families and their mat or skin houses through the forest in pursuit of the animals necessary for food and clothing.
"Of the external habits of the Indians, if we may so speak, we have the most ample details. Their wars, their amusements, their hunting, and the more prominent facts connected with their occupations and condition, have been described with great prolixity and doubtless with much fidelity by a host of persons whose opportunities for observation and whose qualifications for
description have been as different as the places and the eras in which they have written.
"The constitution of Indian society and the ties by which they are kept together furnish a paradox which has never received the explanation it requires. We say they have no government, and they have none whose operation is felt, either in reward or punishment; and yet their lives and property are preserved and their political relations among themselves and with other tribes are duly preserved.
MICHIGAN
Page 39
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