Oneota, or The Red Race of America

“Mr. Schoolcraft possesses unusual pretensions to this rare merit of fidelity.”

“My earliest impressions of the Indian race were drawn from fireside rehearsals of incidents which had happened during the perilous times of the American Revolution, in which my father was a zealous actor, and were all inseparably connected with the fearful ideas of the Indian yell, the tomahawk, the scalping knife, and the fire-brand.”

“The Indians, viewed as a distinct branch of the human race, have some peculiar traits and institutions, from which their history and character may be advantageously studied.”

“Books, and the readers of books, have done much to bewilder and perplex the study of the Indian character.”

“The old idea that the Indian mind is not susceptible of a high, or an advantageous cultivation, rests upon very questionable data.”

“Mr. S. speaks of the Indian as pre-eminently a religious being. Here all writers agree.”

“There lived a noted chief at Michilimackinac, in days past, called Gitsche Naygow, or the Great Sand- Dune, a name, or rather nick-name, which he had, probably, derived from his birth and early residence at a spot of very imposing appearance, so called, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, which is east of the range of the Pictured Rocks.”

“A French trader had entered Lake Superior so late in the season, that with every effort, he could get no farther that Pointe La Petite Fille, before the ice arrested his progress.”