MACKINAC, FORMERLY MICHILIMACINAC. "Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind, GENESIS OF THE INDIAN. To ascertain the genesis of a race or people we must carry our researches far back of modern times into the regions of antiquity. Man began with a mere existence, his personal wants and desires were all he had to care for. The Indian, like the Caucassian, is a creature of environment. He advanced as his limited resources permitted, or descended to the lowest grade of savagery when driven out by a stronger tribe and forced to extremity. "O, why does the white man follow my path, Like the hound on the tiger's track?" When the Spaniards first visited this, then unknown land, they found the inhabitants of the "New World" in the various stages of society, from the lowest savage state to that of a half civilized people. From whence came these tribes and why their various conditions? They must have migrated from adjacent lands and reached this continent from the near shores of Northeastern Asia at a period unknown. America is a continuation of the land surface of the earth from Asia. The shallow straits of "Behring" are merely a depression in the uplift where the ancient drift and glaciers have washed through and by erosion made the original valley wider and deeper. PEOPLE OF ALASKA. "The Esquimaux are evidently of Tartar origin, and no doubt migrated from Asia about the time of their wars in China during the ninth and tenth centuries." The language of that people, on the Eastern and Western coasts of North America, by the sea, and of the Tchoutski bears a strong resemblance. Interpreters from Hudson's Bay, and Moravian missionaries from Labrador can converse with them. They, the Esquimaux, in speaking of themselves, apply the word "Eneuin" people. The beginning of winter is the first of their year. It is divided into four seasons and twelve moons. Kinzeghan, near Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, has long been a trading place with Tchuktchi or Asiatic tribes, who cross the straits, from East Cape, in boats, in mid summer, by way of the Diomede islands. They meet the natives of the coast, east and west, and those of the Mackenzie and Yukon river basins, who come far from the south to trade. In July the Mackenzie is navigable, for large vessels, into Great Slave Lake, more than one thousand miles south of the "Frozen Ocean," and the Yukon (or Kivhpak), as far. Fish and game are abundant in all this territory, and barley, oats and potatoes will grow to maturity at Fort Norman, latitude 64° 31' north. (See "Hours at Home," "Russian America," July, 1867, pp. 254 to 265.) In arctic climes, the days of summer are long, the heat of the sun often intense, nights are short, and the face of nature develops rapidly. The rivers and even the streamlets become irresistible, moving floods. They teem with terrestrial life along their borders, and aqueous life within, and winged aerial upon their waters. Therefore, there is food enough, and to spare, for the Tartar Indian nomads. There is now living on Mackinac Island a mixed blood Indian woman about 68 years old (who came here at the age of seventeen), of the Kilistinoux or Cree tribe. She was born in the Churchill river country, between Hudson's Bay and Great and Little Slave lakes. She says her people went to the north in summer by way of Great Slave lake to barter with the tribes on the "Frozen Sea." They started early in March and did not return until the next year. They met the people from the "Sea" coming up the river, half way. Some of her people returned and others went north and did not come back. Other parties went north by way of Red river (of the north) to trade and sell furs. They, too, would go one year, start in March, and not come back until the next season. Time then was no object. This woman, Madam Cadro (now Cadotte), is part French. Her people gave her in marriage to Cadro when she was only twelve years old. He was a "Courier du Bois" and an "Engagee" of the Hudson's Bay Company. Madam Cadro is an intelligent, industrious, hard working woman, and is generally respected. She relates this story as a part of her life without the slightest idea it has any bearing of importance. "The Kilistinoux have their more ordinary place of abode in the vicinity of the Sea of the North." The Assimpoula lac,' a tribe allied with the Kilistinoux, where the country is still more toward the north," Assineboines, from "assin," a stone, and "boines," or "eboines" a corruption of "Bawn"Sioux. (See Hist. and Biog. notes.) They are the Sioux of the north, and bands of the Sioux of the plains far to the south of them. THE JEWS IN CHINA.-Colonies of Jewish extraction have been known to exist in Pekin and the interior of China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and before. Jewish traditions, Chinese inscriptions, and observations of travelers show that large and influential communities of the Children of Israel have resided in China for a period of not less that two China is the oldest nation on the face of the earth and has been a government, it is claimed, for at least forty-five centuries. Japan was settled from that country and was a part of that vast domain. The natives of Japan believe their country existed 660 years before the Christian Era. That the aboriginals of America came originally from Asia and the outlaying islands of that continent, by the natural drift of current events, the "Curo Shiwo” and the Pacific drift currents, can hardly be doubted. They might have been driven off the coasts of Japan in their frail craft by storms and wafted by the ocean currents to the shores of Alaska, or as far to the south as California and Mexico, or have crossed Behring straits by way of the many islands in that channel. Numerous instances of wrecks with survivors on board have been recorded since 1785. In 1837 three shipwrecked Japanese were picked up in Washington Territory. Others have since been rescued along the Pacific coasts and returned to Japan. What occurred 100 years ago could have happened 1,000 years before, or at any time since the flood, when "All the fountains of the great deep were broken up," and afterwards the surface of the earth was re-peopled. There is no mystery about the origin of the native American. from Asia, the cradle of the human race. Aryan or Mongolian or other extraction; The Indian came He may have been that is of no con sideration. Time, climate, food, habits, and environment, *Hours at Home, May, 1868, pp. 90 to 93. +China, pages 397 to 409 and to 414, and Japan, 627 to 634. Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science, etc. with all its influences have effaced his lineage and made him a distinctly marked type. So, Columbus, when he was first discovered by the shy inhabitants of our tropical sea, was not so far out of the way when he named the natives "Indians." Having essayed to trace the origin of the aborigines, we now come to the time, from A. D. 1001 to 1492, when they were sighted by eastern navigators in the'r native land. One of them, whose exploits are recorded and best known, the aforesaid Christopher Columbus, in 1492, first landed from his Caravels on a tropical island, one of a group at the entrance of what is now the Gulf of Mexico. That Genoese anchored off the coast and viewed the "Promised Land." Investing himself and his followers in gorgeous array they waded to the shore, bearing aloft the colors of Spain and Aragon with the cross, the emblem of Christianity. He unfurls the flag and plants the cross before the astonished and frightened natives on the soil of the New World, taking by force of arms a country belonging to others, in the name of the sovereigns who promoted his enterprise. Here began a series of acts, wrongs, sequestration, pillage and extermination that have been continued under the guise of Christianity by the nations of Europe and our Republic to the present time. It is but the continuance of the survival of the fittest -the strong overpowering the weak. Columbus is followed by Cortez, for one, who falls upon the peaceful nations of Mexico and Peru, slaughters their people, dethrones their monarchs, and lays waste their cities and plantations. Those nations are said to have been far advanced in civilization, agriculture and social conditions. And about the same time came the French, English, Dutch, Portugese and others, until we come down to the founding |