Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest by Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
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page 19 of 425 (04%)
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immediately or remotely connected with it.
It is no wonder that the philanthropic mind, surveying these, races of uncultivated heathen, should stretch forward to the time when, through an unwearied devotion of the white man's energies, and an untiring sacrifice of self and fortune, his red brethren might rise in the scale of social civilization--when Education and Christianity should go hand in hand, to make "the wilderness blossom as the rose." Little did the noble souls at that day rejoicing in the success of their labors at Mackinac, anticipate that in less than a quarter of a century there would remain of all these numerous tribes but a few scattered bands, squalid, degraded, with scarce a vestige remaining of their former lofty character--their lands cajoled or wrested from them, the graves of their fathers turned up by the ploughshare--themselves chased farther and farther towards the setting sun, until they were literally grudged a resting-place on the face of the earth! Our visit to the Mission-school was of short duration, for the Henry Clay was to leave at two o'clock, and in the mean time we were to see what we could of the village and its environs, and after that dine with Mr. Mitchell, an old friend of my husband. As we walked leisurely along over the white, gravelly road, many of the residences of the old inhabitants were pointed out to me. There was the dwelling of Madame Laframboise, an Ottawa woman, whose husband had taught her to read and write, and who had ever after continued to use the knowledge she had acquired for the instruction and improvement of the youth among her own people. It was her custom to receive a class of young pupils daily at her house, that she might give them lessons in the branches mentioned, and also in the principles of the Roman Catholic religion, to which she |
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