Читать книгу Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition) онлайн

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Very recently the Chippeways of Lake Superior, through some oversight in the Canadian government in not making arrangements with them at the proper time, organised a war party against the mining village of Mica Bay, containing more than a hundred male inhabitants. In passing through Lake Superior we were pleased with the flourishing appearance of this village, containing many nicely white-washed houses, grouped in terraces on the steep bank of the lake. The mines were worked by a company, under a grant from the Canadian legislature, who, at the same period, made many other similar grants of mining localities on the lake, without previously purchasing the Indian rights. As the game is nearly extinct on the borders of the lake, the natives subsist chiefly by the fisheries; and the vicinity of the mining establishments was likely to be beneficial to them rather than injurious, by providing a market for their fish. But when they beheld party after party of white men crowding to their lands, eager to take possession of their lots by erecting buildings, and inquisitively examining every cliff, they acquired exaggerated ideas of the value of their rocks. For two summers they descended in large bodies to Saut Ste. Marie, expecting payment, and, being disappointed, thought they were trifled with. They determined, therefore, in council, to bring matters to a crisis by expelling the aggressors, and, in the autumn of 1849, made a descent upon Mica Bay, and drove away the miners and their families. To repel this attack a regiment was ordered up from Canada, at an expense which would have paid the Indians again and again: but a small part of the force only reached Mica Bay, to find the Chippeways gone; the rest were driven back to Saut Ste. Marie by stormy weather, not without very severe suffering, leading, I have been informed, to loss of life.