OJIBWAYS RECEIVED BY QUEEN VICTORIA.
The United States government has always frowned upon the attempts of speculators to exhibit Indians for the purpose of gain. Joel R. Poinsett, Secretary of War under President Van Buren, in a letter to George Catlin, the painter of Indian portraits, expressed the sentiments of every high-minded citizen when he wrote: "I consider such proceedings as calculated to degrade the red man, and certainly not to exalt the whites engaged with them."
An adventurer under the name of Rankin succeeded, in 1839, in taking some Ojibways to England, and arrangements were made to exhibit them in connection with Catlin's portraits. The principal Indian was Ah-quee-we-zanits, about seventy-five years of age. The half-breed interpreter was Louis Cadotte. It had been arranged as a precautionary measure that the Ojibways should abstain from intoxicating liquors. In an interview with the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, Master of the Household to Queen Victoria, they were offered champagne, which they at first, remembering their agreement, refused, but, he assuring them that the drink would not intoxicate, they drank, and from that hour they talked about the Chee-ee Pop-po[1] by day, and dreamed of it by night. After this, they were formally presented to the Queen, who presented them with several hundred dollars. The interpreter, Louis Cadotte, was of fine appearance, and a pretty and respectable English girl fell in love with him, and with the consent of her parents they were married in St. Martin's Church, London. She came with him to Sault Ste. Marie, and after her death he was said to have been much depressed.
- ↑ Catlin mentions they gave champagne the name chick-a-bob-boo, became when the corkscrew was introduced there was a fizz, which sounded like chee-ee, and then the popping out of the cork. See Catlin's Ogibbeway Indians.
