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I have heard a great deal about the Indians from Mr. and Mrs. K., in whose extremely agreeable family I have now my home. Mr. K. is the government agent in all transactions with the Indian tribes in these Northwestern   [p. 604]   States, and he and his family were among the earliest settlers in the wilderness there. Mrs. K., who writes with facility and extremely well, has preserved in manuscript many incidents in the lives of the first colonists, and of their contests with the Indians, and among these many which occurred in her own family. The reading of these narratives is one of the greatest pleasures of the evenings; some are interesting in a high degree; some are full of cruel and horrible scenes, others also touchingly beautiful, and others, again, very comic.

There is material for the most beautiful drama in the history of the captivity of Mrs. K's mother and her free restoration. I know nothing more dramatic than the first terrible scene of the carrying off of the little girl; then the attachment of the Indian chief to the child, the affection which grew up in his heart for her as she grew up in his tent, and was called by the savage tribe "the White Lily;" the episode of the attempt to murder her by the jealous wife of the chief; and, lastly, the moment when the chief, after having for several years rejected all offers of negotiation and gifts, both on the part of the parents and the government, for the restoration of the child, yielded at length to prayers, and consented to a meeting of the mother and daughter, but on the express condition that she should not seek to retain her; and then, when arrived at the appointed place of meeting, with all his warriors in their complete array, he rode alone--spite of all their remonstrances--across the little brook which separated the camp of the whites from that of the Indians, and saw the young girl and her mother throw themselves into each other's arms with tears of joy, he stood overpowered by the sight and exclaimed, "The mother must have her child!" turned his horse, recrossed the brook, and rejoined his own people without a glance at the darling of his heart, "the White Lily," who now, in the fifteenth year of her age, returned to her family! What an excellent   [p. 605]   subject for dramatic treatment! I hope that Mrs. K. will some day publish this beautiful narrative, together with several others which I heard during these evenings.

The massacre of Chicago belongs to the unpleasing portion of the chronicle, and Chicago still retains fresh traces of this event. Yet even that is ennobled by beautiful human actions.

The wooing of my noble and gentlemanly host by the Indian chief Fourlegs for his daughter, and the arrival of the fat Miss Fourlegs on her buffalo hides in the city, where she met with a refusal, belong to the comic portion of the chronicle, and very much amused me. For the rest, the gentle and refined Mr. K., like many others who have lived much among the Indians, has a real attachment to them, and seems to have an eye rather for the virtues than the failings which are peculiar to this remarkable people. The K.'s resided long in Minnesota, and only within the last few years at Chicago (Illinois), where they have a handsome house with a large garden.

Chicago is one of the most miserable and ugly cities which I have yet seen in America, and is very little deserving of its name, "Queen of the Lake;" for, sitting there on the shore of the lake in wretched dishabille, she resembles rather a huckstress than a queen. Certainly, the city seems for the most part to consist of shops. One sees scarcely any pretty country houses, with their gardens, either within or without the city--which is so generally the case in American towns--and in the streets the houses are principally of wood, the streets formed with wood, or, if without, broad and sandy. And it seems as if, on all hands, people came here merely to trade, to make money, and not to live. Nevertheless, I have, here in Chicago, become acquainted with some of the most agreeable and delightful people that I ever met with any where; good people, handsome and intellectual; people to live with, people to talk with, people to like and to grow fond of, both   [p. 606]   men and women; people who do not ask the stranger a hundred questions, but who give him an opportunity of seeing and learning in the most agreeable manner which he can desire; rare people! And besides that, people who are not horribly pleased with themselves and their world, and their city, and their country, as is so often the case in small towns, but who see deficiencies and can speak of them properly, and can bear to hear others speak of them also.

To-day and last evening also, a hot wind has been blowing here, which I imagine must be like the Italian sirocco. One becomes quite enervated by it; and the air of Chicago is a cloud of dust.

September 23d. But in the evening, when the sun descends, and the wind subsides, I go to some higher part of the city, to see the sun set over the prairie land, for it is very beautiful; and, beholding this magnificent spectacle, melancholy thoughts arise. I see in this sun-bright western land thousands of shops and thousands of traders, but no Temple of the Sun, and only few worshipers of the sun and of eternal beauty. Were the Peruvians of a nobler intellectual culture than this people? Had they a loftier turn of mind? Were they the children of the light in a higher degree than the present race who colonize the western land of the New World?

September 24th. I must now tell you of some agreeable Swedes who reside here. They are Captain Schneidan and his wife, and Mr. Uneonius, now the minister of the Swedish congregation of this district, and his wife. They were among the earliest Swedish emigrants who established themselves on the banks of the beautiful lake, Pine Lake, in Wisconsin, and where they hoped to lead an Arcadian, pastoral life. The country was beautiful, but the land for the most part was sterile.

These Swedish gentry, who thought of becoming here the cultivators and colonizers of the wilderness, had miscalculated   [p. 607]   their fitness and their powers of labor. Besides this, they had taken with them the Swedish inclination for hospitality and a merry life, without sufficiently considering how long it could last. Each family built for itself a necessary abode, and then invited their neighbors to a feast. They had Christmas festivities and midsummer dances. But the first year's harvest fell short. The poorly tilled soil could not produce rich harvests. Then succeeded a severe winter, with snow and tempests, and the ill-built houses afforded but inadequate shelter; on this followed sickness, misfortunes, want of labor, want of money, want of all kinds. It is almost incredible what an amount of suffering some of these colonists must have gone through. Nearly all were unsuccessful as farmers; some of them, however, supported themselves and their families by taking to handcraft trades, and as shoemakers or tailors earned those wages which they would have been unable to earn by agriculture. To their honor it must be told that they, amid severe want, labored earnestly and endured a great deal with patient courage without complaining, and that they successfully raised themselves again by their labor. Neither were they left without aid from the people of the country when their condition became known.

Margaret Fuller (Marchioness Ossoli) made a journey into the Western States in company with Mrs. Clarke (the mother of those tall sons). Providence led her to the colonists on Pine Lake. Captain Schneidan was then lying on his sick-bed with an injury of the leg, which had kept him there for some months. His handsome young wife had been obliged, during that severe winter, to do the most menial work; had seen her first-born little one frozen to death in its bed in the room, into which snow and rain found entrance. And they were in the midst of the wilderness alone. They had no means of obtaining help, which was extremely expensive in this district; the maid-   [p. 608]   servant whom they had for a short time had left them, and their neighbors were too far off, or were themselves also suffering under similar want. And now came the two ladies from Boston.

Margaret Fuller thus writes of her visit in her "Summer on the Lakes:"

"In the inner room the master of the house was seated; he had been sitting there long, for he had injured his foot on shipboard, and his farming had to be done by proxy. His beautiful young wife was his only attendant and nurse, as well as farm-house keeper; and how well she performed hard and unaccustomed duties, the objects of her care showed; every thing belonging to the house was rude, but neatly arranged; the invalid, confined to an uneasy wooden chair (they had not been able to induce any one to bring them an easy chair from town), looked as neat and elegant as if he had been dressed by the valet of a duke. He was of noble blood, with clear, full blue eyes, calm features, a tempering of the soldier, scholar, and man of the world in his aspect; he formed a great but pleasing contrast to his wife, whose glowing complexion and dark mellow eye bespoke an origin in some climate more familiar with the sun. He looked as if he could sit there a great while patiently, and live on his own mind, biding his time; she, as if she could bear any thing for affection's sake, but would feel the weight of each moment as it passed.

"Seeing the album full of drawings, and verses which bespoke the circle of elegant and affectionate intercourse they had left behind, we could not but see that the young wife sometimes must need a sister, the husband a companion, and both must often miss that electricity which sparkles from the chain of congenial minds. . . . .

"I feel very differently about these foreigners from Americans; American men and women are inexcusable if they do not bring up children so as to be fit for all necessities;   [p. 609]   that is the meaning of our star, that here, all men being free and equal, all should be fitted for freedom, and an independence by his own resources, Wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him. But the star of Europe brought a different horoscope." . . . .

I must now add that which Margaret Fuller has not related, but which was told me; namely, how nobly she exerted herself with her friend on behalf of the unfortunate Swedes, and how in time a complete change was wrought in their circumstances. They removed from that solitary farm in the forest to Chicago. Schneidan obtained adequate surgical aid; recovered, and is at this moment the most skillful daguerreotypist, probably, in the whole state, and, as such, has made considerable gains. He is just now returned from New York, where he has taken a large and excellent daguerreotype of Jenny Lind. He is universally liked here. His lively, pretty wife now relates, laughing and crying at the same time, the occurrences of their life in the wilderness in a kind of medley of Swedish and English, which is charming. Uneonius and his wife removed hither also, but in better circumstances than the former.

Uneonius is just now at New York; he is gone to see Mademoiselle Lind, and obtain from her money for the completion of the Lutheran church at Chicago. I spent an evening with his wife. That gay, high-spirited girl, of whom I heard when she was married at Upsala to accompany her husband to the New World, she had gone through severe trials of sickness, want, and sorrow. She had laid four children to rest in foreign soil. She had one boy remaining. She was still pretty, still young, but her cheerfulness--that was gone; and her fresh, courageous spirit was changed into quiet patience. She had now a small, new-built house, in a more healthy situation than where they had formerly lived, and very near to the little Lutheran church. The church is very ornamental,   [p. 610]   but as yet unfinished internally. Here I saw somewhat above thirty children, Swedish and Norwegian, assembled to hear a lecture--a little company of kindly-looking, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed children! They were for the most part children of persons in low circumstances, who lived about the neighborhood on small farms. They learn in the school to read and write, as well in English as in their mother tongue. There are very few Swedes resident here. At Milwaukee, and in that part of Wisconsin, there are a great many.

I heard a good deal from Mr. Schneidan and his wife respecting Eric Jansen, and the circumstances which occasioned his death, but shall defer speaking of them till we meet. The man seems to have been of an enigmatical character, half a deceiver and half deceived (either by himself or his demon).

I saw one evening, which I spent with Mrs. Schneidan at her house, my "Belle of Baltimore," Hannah Hawkins; she is a pretty, quiet young girl, of that class of women who are capable of the most beautiful actions without having the least idea that they are doing any thing beautiful. They are themselves moral beauty, and they follow the impulses of their nature as flowers follow theirs.

There are a great number of Germans in Chicago, especially among the tradespeople and handcraftsmen. The city is only twenty years old, and it has increased in that time to a population of twenty-five thousand souls. A genuine "baby" of the Great West! but, as I have already said, somewhat unkemmed as yet. There is, however, here a street, or, more properly speaking, a row of houses or small villas along the shore of the lake, standing on elevated ground, which has in its situation a character of high life, and which will possess it in all respects some day, for there are already people here from different parts of the globe who will constitute the sound kernel of a healthy aristocracy.

Chicago bears on its arms the name of "the City in the Garden;" and when the prairie land around it becomes garden there will be reason for its poetical appellation.

I have seen here, also, light and lofty school-rooms, and have heard the scholars in them, under the direction of an excellent master, sing quartettes in such a manner as affected me to tears. And the children, how eager, how glad to learn they were! Hurra! The West builds light school-rooms where the young may learn joyfully, and sing correctly and sweetly! The West must progress nobly. The building of the Temple of the Sun has already commenced.

My friends here deplored the chaotic state, and the want of integrity which prevails in political affairs, and which may be principally attributed to the vast emigration of the rudest class of the European population, and the facility with which every civil right is obtained in the state. A year's residence in the state gives the immigrant the right of a citizen, and he has a vote in the election of the governors both of the city and the state. Unprincipled political agitators avail themselves of the ignorance of immigrants, and inveigle them by fine speeches to vote for the candidate whom they laud, and who sometimes betrays them. The better and more noble-minded men of the state are unable to compete with these schemers, and therefore do not offer themselves; hence it most frequently happens that they are not the best men who govern the state. Bold and ambitious fortune-hunters most easily get into office; and once in office, they endeavor to maintain their place by every kind of scheme and trick, as well as by flattering the masses of the people to preserve their popularity. The ignorant people of Europe, who believe that kings and great lords are the cause of all the evils in the world, vote for that man who speaks loudest against the powerful, and who declares himself to be a friend of the people.

I also heard it lamented that the Scandinavian immigrants not unfrequently come hither with the belief that the State Church and religion are one and the same thing, and when they have left behind them the former, they will have nothing to do with the latter. Long compulsion of mind has destroyed, to that degree, their powers of mind; and they come into the West very frequently, in the first instance, as rejectors of all church communion and every higher law. And this is natural enough for people not accustomed to think greatly; but is a moment of transition which can not last very long in any sound mind, and in a hemisphere where the glance is so clear and alive to every thing which contributes to the higher life of man or of society.

Illinois is a youthful state, with a million inhabitants, but is able, with her rich soil, to support at least ten millions. The climate, however, is not favorable to immigrants from Europe, who during the first few years suffer from fever and other climatic diseases.

In the morning I leave Chicago and cross Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, in Wisconsin. An agreeable young man came last evening to fetch me there.

I have been merely a few days in Chicago, and yet I have seen people there with whom I should like to live all my days.

But these feelings for amiable people whom I meet with now and then during my pilgrimage are to me as "a tent of one night," under which I repose thankfully. I would fain linger yet longer; but I must the next morning remove my tent and proceed still further--and I do so with a sigh.

Farewell, ye charming people in that ugly city! Receive my thanks, warm hearts of Chicago!

P.S.--Jenny Lind is in New York, and has been received with American furor --the maddest of all madness. The sale by auction of the tickets for her first concert is   [p. 613]   said to have made forty thousand dollars. She has presented the whole of her share of profit from that first concert to benevolent institutions of New York. Three hundred ladies are said to besiege her daily, and thousands of people of all classes follow her steps. Hundreds of letters are sent to her each day. Ah! poor girl! Hercules himself would not be equal to that.