Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. Lamentable death of an Indian woman. Arrival of a missionary. Modes of burial. Ceremony of adoption. Tour among the Putawatomies. A suffering mother and infant. Dreadful effects of intemperance. Baptism of Mr. Lykins. He is appointed a missionary. Temperance Society. Journey to Detroit. Appointments from Government. Disinterestedness of the missionaries. Arrival of missionaries. Church constituted. Severe sickness of the mission family. Death. Arrival of a missionary. On the 14th of April, 1822, four of our Putawatomie pupils, who had been absent through the winter, returned, ragged and wretched enough. They informed me that their grandmother, an aged woman, was lying at a camp a little distance from our house, at the point of dying. In the afternoon we were informed that the old woman was dead. Two young men, who were her grandsons, intimated to me, through the medium of some of their relatives belonging to our family, a wish that I would assist in burying her, and appeared to be very thankful when I consented. My wife and I walked to their camp, where we found the corpse lying on the ground, wrapped in an old blanket. In this place and position the old woman had Iain several days before her death, as we discovered by the whitish appearance of the grass underneath her. It had been raining, and sometimes snowing, for several days, and the earth was very full of water; to all which she had been exposed, without even a tent or a piece of bark to shelter her from the storm from above, or to save her from the water beneath. The few rags which had served for her clothing were filthy in the extreme, and under and about her were vermin, such as might be seen about a putrid carcass that had lain some days on the earth. The sight was...
