General C. writes:  “The result of your inquiries into the Indian language is highly valuable and satisfactory.  I return you my sincere thanks for the papers.  I have examined them attentively.  I should be happy to have you prosecute your inquiries into the manners, customs, &c., of the Indians.  You are favorably situated, and have withal such unconquerable perseverance, that I must tax you more than other persons.  My stock of materials, already ample, is rapidly increasing, and many new and important facts have been disclosed.  It is really surprising that so little valuable information has been given to the world on this subject.”

Mr. B.F.  Stickney, formerly an agent at Fort Wayne, Indiana, writes from Depot (now Toledo):  “I am pleased to see that your mind is engaged on the Chippewa language.  It affords a field sufficiently extensive for the range of all the intellect and industry that the nation can bring into action.  If the materials already collected should, after a scrutiny and arrangement, be thrown upon the literary world, it would excite so much interest as not to permit the inquiry thus to stop at the threshold.  It is really an original inquiry concerning the operations of the human mind, wherein a portion of the human race, living apart from the rest, have independently devised means for the interchange of thoughts and ideas.  Their grammatical rules are so widely different from all our European forms that it forces the mind to a retrospective view of first principles.

“I have observed the differences you mention between the Ottowa and Chippewa dialects.  Notwithstanding I conceive them to be (as you observe) radically the same language, I think there is less difference between the band of Ottowas you mention, of L’Arbre Croche, than the Ottowas of this vicinity.  It appears that their languages are subject to very rapid changes.  From not being written, they have no standard to resort to, and I have observed it demonstrated in bands of the same tribe, residing at considerable distances from each other, and having but little intercourse for half a century; these have with difficulty been able to understand each other.

“I am pleased to learn that you are still advancing the sciences of mineralogy and conchology.  Your discovery of native silver imbedded in native copper is certainly a very extraordinary one.”

28th.  Major E. Cutler, commanding officer, applies to me, as a magistrate, to prosecute all citizens who have settled on the reserve at St. Mary’s, and opened “shops for the sale of liquor.”  Not being a public prosecuting attorney, it does not appear how this can at all be done, without his designating the names of the offenders, and the offences for which they are to be tried.