The Conquest of Canada, Vol. 2

by George Warburton

FOOTNOTES:

[228] According to the interesting researches of Mr. Gaultier, on the Organization of the Human Skin, p. 57. John Hunter observes, that in several animals, the coloration of the hair is independent of that of the skin.

Blumenbach informs us how climate operates in modifying the color of the skin. He states that the proximate cause of the dark color of the integuments in an abundance of carbon, secreted by the skin with hydrogen, precipitated and fixed in the rete mucosum by the contact of the atmospheric oxygen.—De Variet., p. 124.

If Voltaire is to be believed, no well-informed person formerly passed by Leyden without seeing a part of the black membrane (the reticulum mucosum) of a negro, dissected by the celebrated Ruysell. Their error is, however, now universally admitted. The "rete mucosum" has been discovered to be nothing but the latest layer of epidermis, the inner surface of which is being continually renewed as the exterior is worn away, just like the bark of a tree. There is no distinct coloring layer, it appears, either in the fair or the dark-skinned races, the peculiar hue of the latter depending upon the presence of coloring matter in the cells of the epidermis itself. Color, therefore, is not even skin deep, for it does not reach the true skin, being entirely confined to the epidermis or scarf skin.

No. XLIV.

"The Indian and the negro races, both fated, as it seems, to yield the supremacy to the whites, present in every other particular a curious contrast to each other. The red man appears to have received from nature every quality which contributes to greatness, except—I have no other word for it—tamability; he has shown in many remarkable instances intellectual capacity, talents for government, eloquence, energy, and self-command.... There is something noble and striking—something that commands respect and admiration, in the Indian character, irreconcilable though it be with advanced civilization and the operation of Christian influences. The negro, on the contrary, has precisely what the Indian wants; he is a domestic animal.... The Indian avoids his conqueror; the negro bows at his feet. The Indian loves the independence and privations of his solitude better than all the flesh-pots of Egypt; the negro, if left to himself, is helpless and miserable: he must have society and sensual pleasures; if he be allowed to eat and drink well, to dance, to sing, and to make love, he seems to have no further or higher aspirations, and to care nothing for the degradation of his race. With the single exception of Toussaint, I know no instance of a negro distinguishing himself in politics, or arms, or letters; and though I make every allowance for the difficulties and obstacles to his doing so which his situation imposes on him, I can not allow that these account for the fact that, notwithstanding the excellent education which many negroes receive, and the stimulus afforded by constant intercourse with whites, not one of them has yet, either here or in the West Indies, with the above-named exception, taken the lead among his countrymen, or made a name for himself. And this natural superiority of the Indian is, perhaps unconsciously, recognized and illustrated in a singular manner by the white man, in the different feelings which he exhibits upon the subject of amalgamation with the two races. Some of the best families in the United States are proud to trace their origin to Indian chiefs (e.g., the Randolphs of Virginia boast that they came of the lineage of Powhatan); and I have myself met with half-breeds who were considered (and most justly) in every respect equal in estimation with full-blooded whites. It is needless to observe, that with respect to the negroes, the precise converse is the case. Cæteris paribus, we seem naturally to receive the red man as our equal."—Godley's Letters from America, vol. i., p. 153.

No. XLV.

"These islands were partly discovered by Behring in 1741, and the rest at several periods since his time. The most considerable of them amount to forty in number, and they may be justly considered as a branch of the Kamtskadale Mountains continued in the sea. The three small islands, known by the names of Attak, Shemya, and Semitshi, with a few others, were denominated by the Russians Aleutskie Ostrova, because a bold rock in the language of these parts is called 'Aleut.' In the sequel this name was extended to the whole chain, though a part of it is named the Andreanoffskoi, and the rest, lying further toward America, the Fox Islands. The survey of these islands, more anciently discovered by the Russians, and of the adjacent parts of the two continents, was made by Captain Cook in his third voyage, in 1778. If the Russians, then, can deservedly claim the priority of the discovery, no one can withhold from the adventurous and persevering Captain Cook the glory and the merit of having fixed the distance of the two continents and their respective extent, to the east for Asia, and to the west for North America."—Rees's Cyclopædia, art. Aleutian Islands.

No. XLVI.

"Almost every where in the New World we recognize a multiplicity of forms and tenses in the verb, an artificial industry to indicate before-hand, either by inflection of the personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb, or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of its object and its subject, and to distinguish whether the object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine gender, simple, or in complex number. This multiplicity characterizes the rudest American languages. Astarloa reckons, in like manner, in the grammatical system of the Biscayan, 206 forms of the verb. Strange conformity in the structure of languages among races of men so different, and on spots so distant.

"Those languages, the principal tendency of which is inflection, excite less the curiosity of the vulgar than those which seem formed by aggregation. In the first, the elements of which words are composed, and which are generally reduced to a few letters, are no longer distinguished. These elements, when isolated, exhibit no meaning; the whole is assimilated and mixed together. The American languages, on the contrary, are like complicated machines, the wheels of which are exposed. The artifice is visible—I mean the industrious mechanism of their construction. We seem to be present at their formation, and we should state them to be of very recent origin, if we did not recollect that the human mind follows imperturbably an impulse once given; that nations enlarge, improve, and repair the grammatical edifice of their language according to a plan already determined; finally, that there are countries where the languages of all the institutions and the arts have remained stereotyped, as it were, during the lapse of ages. The highest degree of intellectual development has been hitherto found among nations which belong to the Indian and Pelasgic branch. The languages, formed principally by aggregation, seem themselves to oppose obstacles to the improvement of the mind. They are, in fact, unfurnished with that rapid movement, that interior life, to which the inflection of the root is favorable, and which gives so many charms to works of the imagination. Let us not, however, forget that a people celebrated in the remotest antiquity, from whom the Greeks themselves borrowed knowledge, had perhaps a language, the construction of which recalls involuntarily that of the language of America. What a scaffolding of little monosyllabic and dissyllabic forms is added to the verb and to the substantive in the Coptic language!"—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. iii., p. 273.

In his "Researches," Humboldt observes: "We find in the New Continent languages, some of which, as the Greenland, the Cora, the Tamanac, the Totonac, and the Quichua (Archiv. fuer Ethnographie, b. i., s. 345; Vaters, s. 206), display a richness of grammatical forms which we trace nowhere in the Old World, except at Congo, and among the Biscayans, who were the remains of the ancient Cantabrians. But, amid these marks of civilization (referring to the Aztec nation), and this progressive perfection of language, it is remarkable that no people of America had attained that analysis of sounds which leads to the most admirable, we might almost say the most miraculous of all inventions, an alphabet. We are led to think that the progressive perfection of symbolic signs, and the facility with which objects are painted, had prevented the introduction of letters ... not the case in Egypt."

Chateaubriand says that the Jesuits have left important works relative to the language of the Canadian savage. Father Chaumont, who had lived fifty years among the Hurons, composed a grammar of their language. To Father Rasles, who spent ten years in an Abenakis village, we are indebted for valuable documents. A French and Iroquois dictionary—a new treasure for philologists—is finished. There is also a manuscript dictionary—Iroquois and English—but, unluckily, the first volume is lost.

"Les trois langues, Huronne, Algonquine et Siou sont les langues mères du Canada. Ils ont tous les caractères des langues primitives, et il est certain qu'elles n'ont pas une origine commune. La seule prononciation suffisoit pour le pronom. Le Siou sifle en parlant, le Huron n'a point de lettre labiale, qu'il ne sçanroit prononcer, parle du gosier et aspire presque toutes les syllabes; l'Algonquin prononce avec plus de douceur, et parle plus naturellement. Je n'ai pu rien apprendre de particulier de la première de ces trois langues; mais nos anciens missionnaires ont beaucoup travaillé sur les deux autres, et sur les principales de leurs dialectes: voici ce que j'en ais oui dire aux plus habiles.

"La langue Huronne est d'une abondance, d'une énergie, et d'une noblesse, qu'on ne trouve peut-être réunies dans aucune des plus belles, que nous connoissons, et ceux, à qui elle est propre, quoiqu'ils ne soient plus qu'une poignée d'hommes, ont encore dans l'âme une élévation, qui s'accorde bien mieux avec la majesté de leur langage, qu'avec le triste état, où ils sont réduits. Quelques uns ont cru y trouver des rapports avec l'Hébreu; d'autres en plus grand nombre ont prétendu qu'elle avoit la même origine que celle des Grecs; mais rien n'est plus frivole que les preuves, qu'ils en apportent. La langue Algonquine n'a pas autant de force, que la Huronne, mais elle a plus de douceur et d'élégance. Toutes deux ont une richesse d'expressions, une variété de tones, une propriété de termes, une régularité, qui étonnent: mais ce qui surprend encore davantage, c'est que parmi des Barbares qu'on ne voit point s'étudier à bien parler, et qui n'ont jamais eu l'usage de l'écriture, il ne s'introduit point un mauvais mot, un terme impropre, une construction vicieuse, et que les enfans mêmes en conservent, jusque dans le discours familier, toute la pureté. D'ailleurs, la manière dont ils animent tout se qu'ils disent, ne laisse aucun lieu de douter qui ne comprennent toute la valeur de leur expressions, et toute la beauté de leur langue. Dans le Huron tout se conjugue; un certain artifice, que je ne vous expliquerois pas bien, y fait distinguer des verbes, les noms, les pronoms, les adverbes, &c. Les verbes simples ont une double conjugaison, l'une absoluë, l'autre réciproque. Les troisièmes personnes ont les deux genres, car il n'y en a que deux dans ces langues; à sçavoir, le genre noble, et le genre ignoble. Pour ce qui est des nombres et des tems, on y trouve les mêmes différences que dans le Grec. Par exemple, pour raconter un voyage, on s'exprime autrement si on la fait par terre, ou si on l'a fait par eau. Les verbes actifs se multiplient autant de fois, qu'il y a de choses, qui tombent sous leur action; comme le verbe, qui signifie Manger, varie autant de fois, qu'il y a de choses comestibles. L'action s'exprime autrement à l'égard d'une chose inanimée: ainsi voir un homme, et voir une pierre, ce sont deux verbes. Se servir d'une chose, qui appartient à celui qui s'en sert, ou à celui à qui on parle, ce sont autant de verbes différens.

"Il y a quelque chose de tout cela dans la langue Algonquine, mais la manière n'en est pas la même, et je ne suis nullement en état de vous en instruire. Cependant, madame, si du peu, que je viens de vous dire, il s'ensuit que la richesse et la variété de ces langues les rendent extrêmement difficiles à apprendre, la disette et la stérilité où elles sont tombées ne causent pas un moindre embarras. Car, comme les peuples, quand nous avons commencé à les fréquenter, ignoroient presque tout ce dont ils n'avoient pas l'usage, ou qui ne tomboit pas sous leurs sens, ils manquoient de termes pour les exprimer, ou les avoient laissé tomber dans l'oubli."—Charlevoix, tom. v., p. 288.

The variety of dialects proves the little communication held between the different tribes of savages, a necessary consequence of their living by the chase, and requiring extensive hunting-grounds.

"We need only," says Acosta (De Procur. Indorum Salut.), "cross a valley for hearing another jargon."

No. XLVII.

"The following are the results of the most recent researches on the lines of fortifications, and the tumuli found between the Rocky Mountains and the chain of the Alleganies. The fortifications chiefly occupy the space between the great lakes of Canada, the Mississippi and the Ohio, from the fourty-fourth to the thirty-ninth degree of latitude. Those which advance most toward the northeast are on the Black River, one of the tributary streams of Lake Ontario. The most remarkable ancient fortifications in the State of Ohio are, 1st. Newark, a very regular octagon, containing an area of 32 acres, and connected with a circular circumvallation of 16 acres; the eight great doors of the octagon are defended by eight works placed before each opening. 2d. Perryvale County, numerous walls, not in clay, but stone. 3d. Marietta, two great squares with twelve doors; the walls of earth are 21 feet high, and 42 feet at their base. 4th. Circleville, a square with eight doors, and eight small works for their defense connected with a circular fort, surrounded by two walls and a moat. 5th. Point Creek, at the confluence of the Scioto and the Ohio; the fortifications are partly irregular; one of them contains 62 acres. 6th. Portsmouth, opposite Alexandria; vast ruins, disposed on parallel lines, denote that this spot heretofore contained a numerous population. 7th. Little Miami and Cincinnati, a wall of 7 feet high and 6300 toises long. All these square forts are placed as exactly to the east as the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids; when the forts have only one opening, it is directed toward the rising sun. The walls of these lines of fortification are most frequently of earth, but two miles from Chilicothe, in the State of Ohio, we find a wall constructed in stone, from 12 to 15 feet high, and from 5 to 8 feet thick, forming an inclosure of 80 acres. It is not yet precisely known how far those works extend to the west, along the course of the Missouri and the River La Plata; but they are not found on the north of the Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Michigan, neither do they pass the chain of the Alleganies. Some circumvallations discovered on the banks of the Chenango, near Oxford, in the State of New York, may be considered as a very remarkable exception. We must not confound these military monuments with the mounds or tumuli containing thousands of skeletons of a stunted race of men, scarcely 5 feet high. These mounds increase in number from the north toward the south; Mr. Brackenridge thinks there are nearly 3000 tumuli, from 20 to 100 feet high, between the mouth of the Ohio, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Rio San Francisco, and that the number of skeletons they contain indicate how considerable must have been the population heretofore of those countries. These monuments, considered as the places of sepulture of great communes, are most frequently situated at the confluence of rivers, and on the most favorable points for trade. The base of the tumuli is round, or of an oval form; they are generally of a conical form, and sometimes flattened at the summit, as if intended to serve for sacrifices, or other ceremonies to be seen by a great mass of people at once. Some of those monuments are two or three stories high, and resemble in their form the Mexican Teocallis, and the pyramids with steps of Egypt and Western Asia. Some of the tumuli are constructed of earth, and some of stones heaped together. Hatchets have been found on them, together with painted pottery, vases, and ornaments of brass, a little iron, silver in plates (near Marietta), and perhaps gold (near Chilicothe). Some of these mounds are only a few feet high, and are placed at the center or in the neighborhood of the circular circumvallations; they were either tribunes for haranguing the assembled people, or places of sacrifice, and where they are only from 20 to 25 feet high, they may be considered as observatories erected to discover the movements of a neighboring enemy. The great tumuli, from 80 to 100 feet high, are most frequently insulated, and sometimes seem to be of the same age as the fortifications to which they are linked. The latter merit particular attention: I know nowhere any thing that resembles them either in South America or the ancient continent. The regularity of the polygon and circular forms, and the small works intended to cover the doors of the building, are, above all, remarkable. We know not whether they were inclosures of property, walls of defense against enemies, or intrenched camps, as in Central Asia. The custom of separating the different quarters of a town by circumvallations is observed alike in the ancient Tenochleitian and the Peruvian town of Chimu, the ruins of which I examined, between Truxillo and the coast of the South Sea. The tumuli are less characteristic constructions, and may have belonged to nations who had no communication with one another; they cover both Americas, the north of Asia, and the whole east of Europe, and, it is said, are still constructed by the Omawhaws of the River Plata. The skulls contained in the tumuli of the United States furnish means of recognizing, almost with certainty, to what degree the race of men by whom they were raised differ from the Indians who now inhabit the same countries. Mr. Mitchell believes that the skeletons of the caverns of Kentucky and Tennessee 'belong to the Malays, who came by the Pacific Ocean to the western coast of America, and were destroyed by the ancestors of the present Indians, and who were of Tartar race (Mongul).' With respect to the tumuli and the fortifications, the same learned writer supposes, with Mr. De Witt Clinton, that those monuments are the works of Scandinavian nations, who, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, visited the coast of Greenland, Newfoundland, or Vinland, or Drageo, and a part of the continent of North America. If this hypothesis be well founded, the skulls found in the tumuli ought to belong, not to the American, Mongul, or Malay race, but to a race vulgarly called Caucasian.... Did the nations of the Mexican race, in their migrations to the south, send colonies toward the east, or do the monuments of the United States pertain to the Autochthone nations? Perhaps we must admit in North America, as in the ancient world, the simultaneous existence of several centers of civilization, of which the mutual relations are not known in history. The very civilized nations of New Spain, the Tolteques, the Azteques, and the Chichimeques, pretended to have issued successively, from the sixth to the twelfth century, from three neighboring countries situated toward the north. These nations spoke the same language, they had the same cosmogonic fables, the same propensity for the sacerdotal congregations, the same hieroglyphic paintings, the same divisions of time, the same taste (Chinese and Japanese) for noting and registering every thing. The names given by them to the towns built in the country of Analmae; were those of the towns they had abandoned in their ancient country. The civilization on the Mexican table-land was regarded by the inhabitants themselves as the copy of something which had existed elsewhere, as the reflection of the primitive civilization of Aztlan. Where, it may be asked, must be placed that parent land of the colonies of Anahuac, that officinum gentium which, during five centuries, sends nations toward the south who understand each other without difficulty, and recognize each other for relations? Asia, north of Amour, where it is nearest America, is a barbarous country, and in supposing (which is geographically possible) a migration of southern Asiatics by Japan, Tarakay (Tchoka), the Kurile and Aleutian Isles, from southwest toward the northeast (from 40 to 55 degrees of latitude), how can it be believed that in so long a migration, on a way so easily intercepted, the remembrance of the institutions of the parent country could have been preserved with so much force and clearness? The cosmogonic fables, the pyramidal constructions, the system of the calendar, the animals of the tropics found in the catasterim of days, the convents and congregations of priests, the taste for statistic enumerations, the annals of the empire held in the most scrupulous order, lead us toward Oriental Asia, while the lively remembrances of which we have just spoken, and the peculiar physiognomy which Mexican civilization presents in so many other respects, seem to indicate the antique existence of an empire in the north of America, between the thirty-sixth and forty-second degrees of latitude. We can not reflect on the military monuments of the United States without recollecting the first country of the civilized nations of Mexico. It is in rising to more general historical considerations, in examining with more care than has been hitherto done the languages and the osteologic conformation of different tribes, in exploring the immense country bounded by the Alleganies and the coast of the Western Ocean, that means will be obtained of throwing light on a problem so worthy of exercising the sagacity of historians.... According to the traditions collected by Mr. Heckewelder, the country east of the Mississippi was heretofore inhabited by a powerful nation, of gigantic stature, called Alleghewi, and which gave its name to the Alleganian mountains. The Alleghewis were more civilized than any of the other tribes found in the northern climates by the Europeans of the sixteenth century. They inhabitated towns founded on the banks of the Mississippi, and the fortifications that now excite the astonishment of travelers were constructed by them, in order to defend themselves against the Delawares, who came from the west, and were allied at that period with the Iroquois. It may be supposed that this invasion of a barbarous people changed the political and moral state of those countries. The Alleghewis were vanquished by the Delawares after a long struggle. In their flight toward the south they gathered together the bones of their relations in separate tumuli; they descended the Mississippi, and what became of them is not known.... The lines of fortification of a prodigious length observed by Captain Lewis on the banks of the Missouri sufficiently prove that the ancient habitation of the Alleghewis, that powerful people which I am inclined to regard as being of Tolteque or Azteque race, extended far to the west of the Mississippi, toward the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Nuttall, in going up the Arkansas to Cadron, was informed of the existence of an ancient intrenchment, resembling a triangular fort. The Arkansas assert that it is the work of a white and civilized people, whom, when they arrived in this country, their ancestors fought and vanquished, not by force, but cunning. They attribute, also, to a more ancient and polished people than themselves, the monuments of rough stones heaped up on the summit of the hills. Other monuments, not less curious, are the commodious roads of immense length which the natives have traced from time immemorial, and which lead from the banks of the Arkansas, near Little Rock, to Saint Louis on the right, and by the settlement of Mont Prairie, as far as Natchitoches, on the left. Do the characteristic features of colossal stature and white color, attributed to nations now destroyed, owe their origin to the ideas of power and physical force in general, to the feeling of the intellectual preponderance of the Europeans, or are those features linked with the fables of white men, legislators, and priests, which we find among the Mexicans, the inhabitants of New Granada, and so many other American nations? The skeletons contained in the tumuli of the trans-Alleganian country belong, for the most part, to a stunted race of men, of lower stature than the Indians of Canada and the Missouri.

"An idol discovered at Natchez has been justly compared by M. Malte-Brun to the images of celestial spirits found by Pallas among the Mongul nations. If the tribes who inhabit the towns on the banks of the Mississippi issued from the same country of Aztlan, it must be admitted that the Tolteques, the Chichimeques, and the Azteques, from the inspection of their idols, and their essays in sculpture, were much less advanced in the arts than the Mexican tribes, who, without deviating toward the east, have followed the great path of the nations of the New World, directed from north to south, from the banks of the Gila toward the Lake of Nicaragua."—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. vi., p. 328.

No. XLVIII.

"Dr. Morton, in his luminous and philosophical essay on the aboriginal race of America, seems to have proved that all the different tribes, except the Eskimaux, are of one race, and that this race is peculiar and distinct from all others. The physical characteristics of the Fuegians, the Indians of the tropical plains, those of the Rocky Mountains, and of the great Valley of the Mississippi, are the same, not only in regard to feature and external lineaments, but also in osteological structure. After comparing nearly 400 crania, derived from tribes inhabiting almost every region of both Americas, Dr. Morton has found the same peculiar shape pervading all; 'the square or rounded head, the flattened or vertical occiput, the high cheek bones, the ponderous maxillæ, the large quadrangular orbits, and the low, receding forehead.' The oldest skulls from the cemeteries of Peru, the tombs of Mexico, or the mounds of the Mississippi and Ohio, agree with each other, and are of the same type as the heads of the most savage existing tribes."—Lyell, vol. ii., p. 37.

No. XLIX.

"I saw no person among the Chaymas who had any natural deformity. I might say the same of thousands of Caribs, Muyseas, and Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom we observed during the course of five years. Bodily deformities—deviations from nature—are infinitely rare among certain races of men, especially those nations who have the dermoid system highly colored. I can not believe that they depend solely on the progress of civilization, a luxurious life, or the corruption of morals. We might be tempted to think that savages all appear well made and vigorous, because feeble children die young for want of care, and that the strongest alone survive; but these causes can not act on the Indians of the missions, who have the manners of our peasants, and the Mexicans of Cholula and Tlascala, who enjoy wealth that has been transmitted to them by ancestors more civilized than themselves. If, in every state of cultivation, the copper-colored race manifest the same inflexibility, the same resistance to deviation from a primitive type, are we not forced to admit that this property belongs in great measure to hereditary organization—to that which constitutes the race? I use intentionally the phrase in great measure, not entirely to exclude the influence of civilization. Besides, with copper-colored men, as with the whites, luxury and effeminacy, by weakening the physical constitution, had heretofore rendered deformities more common at Corezco and Tenochtitlan."—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. iii., p. 235.

No. L.

To those well read in the sad records of Indian history, the names of Powhatan, Opechancanough, Massasoit, Alexander, Philip, Canonchet, Logan, Pontiac, and the never-to-be-forgotten Tecumthè, will suggest memories fully justifying the above assertion. The name of Tecumthè signifies "a tiger crouching for his prey." He was equally great in council and in war, noble and generous in spirit as commanding in intellect. He bore the commission of Chief of the Indian Forces in the British army during the late war. He did not, however, join the ranks of the white men until the failure of several admirably contrived projects convinced his sound and enlightened judgment that opposition to the white race was vain. Pontiac was an Ottawa chieftain, who in 1763 succeeded in the next-to-impossible scheme of uniting all the scattered and often hostile Indian tribes distributed throughout the colonized districts of North America in one grand confederacy against their European invaders. Their first step was the projected extinction of all the white man's posts along a thousand miles of frontier; and he actually succeeded so far as to cut off, almost simultaneously, nine out of twelve of these military establishments. The surprise of Michillimackinac, one of these stations, is thus narrated in a public document. (It was a period of profound peace between the Europeans and Indians):

"The fort was then upon the main land, near the northern point of the peninsula. The Ottawas, to whom the assault was committed, prepared for a great game of ball, to which the officers of the garrison were invited. While engaged in play, one of the parties gradually inclined toward the fort, and the other pressed after them. The ball was once or twice thrown over the pickets, and the Indians were suffered to enter and procure it. Nearly all the garrison were present as spectators, and those on duty were alike unprepared as unsuspicious. Suddenly the ball was again thrown into the fort, and all the Indians rushed after it. The rest of the tale is soon told: the troops were butchered, and the fort destroyed." This extensive and well-laid scheme failed, from Pontiac himself being betrayed at the fort of Detroit. He has been accused of great cruelty; but, in contests waged between the red and white races, this is a word of doubtful import. His generosity and heroism are undeniable.

As a compliment, Major Rogers had sent Pontiac a bottle of brandy. His counselors advised him not to take it: "It must be poisoned," said they, "and sent with a design to kill him;" but Pontiac laughed at their suspicions. "He can not," he replied, "he can not take my life; I have saved his!"

No. LI.

But a far truer insight into the religious state of the American Indian will be obtained by observing how peculiarly and emphatically he is, in the words of the apostle, "a law unto himself." I mean, how distinctly he evinces, in the whole moral conduct of his life, that he lives under a strong and awful sense of positive obligation. It is of little matter with what doctrines that sense of obligation connects itself. It often appears to connect itself with none. The Indian can not tell why a burden is laid upon him to act in this or that manner. He obeys a law undefined, unwritten, but mysteriously binding upon his spirit. All the compulsive force which what we call the law of honor had upon the conscience of a man of the world—I had almost said which religious sanctions have upon the man of principle—is scarcely to be paralleled with that kind of moral necessity which seems in some cases to actuate his proceedings. If religion be what its name implies, id quod relligat, that which binds the will, and enforces self-denial and self-devotion (be the object or motive held out what it may), then no people taken in the mass is to be compared, in this respect, to the savages of America. "After all," says Mr. Flint, "that which has struck us, in contemplating the Indians, with the most astonishment and admiration, is the invisible but universal energy of the operation and influence of an inexplicable law, which has, where it operates, a more certain and controlling power than all the municipal and written laws of the whites united. There is despotic rule without any hereditary or elected chief. There are chiefs with great power, who can not tell when, where, or how they became such. There is perfect unanimity on a question involving the existence of a tribe, when every member belonged to the wild and fierce democracy of nature, and could dissent without giving a reason. A case occurs where it is prescribed by custom that an individual should be punished with death. Escaped from the control of his tribe, and as free as the winds, this invisible tie is about him, and he returns and surrenders himself to justice. His accounts are not settled, and he is in debt. He requests delay till he shall have finished his summer's hunt. He finishes it, pays his debt, and dies with a constancy which has always been, in all views of the Indian character, the theme of admiration."—Flint's Geography of the Mississippi Valley, p. 125.

In the expressive words of Penn, "What good might not a good people graft, where there is so distinct a knowledge both of good and evil?"—Report on Aborigines, 1837, p. 116.

Mr. Merivale adds, "I would not insert the following high-colored expression in a work edited by Washington Irving, were it not for the remarkable agreement between all capable observers of the uncontaminated races of Indians upon this subject. 'Simply to call these people religious (some tribes of the Rocky Mountains) would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of their conduct. They are more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages.'"—Adventures of Captain Bonneville.

No. LII.

Catlin gives the same account of the appropriation of the Manitou or guardian angel as Lafitau and Charlevoix. He applies to it the term of Mystery, or Medicine-bag, and thus explains the derivation of the modern term:

"The term Medicine, in its common acceptation among the Indians, means mystery, and nothing else. The origin of the term is, that in the French language a doctor is called 'Médecin;' the Indian country is full of doctors, and as they are all magicians, and profess to be skilled in many mysteries, the word 'médecin' has become habitually applied to every thing mysterious or unaccountable, and the English and American have easily and familiarly adopted the same word, with a slight alteration conveying the same meaning; and, to be a little more explicit, they have denominated these personages 'Medicine-men,' which means something more than merely a doctor or physician. The Indians do not use the word 'medicine,' however, but in each tribe they have a word of their own construction synonymous with mystery or mystery-man. Their medicine-bag then is a mystery-bag, and its meaning and importance necessary to be understood, as it may be said to be the key to Indian life and character.

"Feasts are often made, and dogs and horses sacrificed, to a man's 'medicine;' and days, and even weeks of fasting and penance of various kinds are often suffered to appease his medicine, which he fancies he has in some way offended. This curious custom has generally been done away with along the frontier, where white men laugh at the Indian for the observance of so ridiculous and useless a form; but in this country (beyond the Rocky Mountains) it is still in full force, and every male in the tribe carries this his supernatural charm or guardian, to which he looks for the preservation of his life in battle or in other danger.... During my travels thus far I have been unable to buy a medicine-bag of an Indian, though I have offered extravagant prices for them; and even on the frontier, where they have been induced to abandon the practice, though a white may induce an Indian to relinquish his medicine, yet he can not buy it of him: the Indian in such case will bury it to please a white, and save it from his sacrilegious touch, and he will linger around the spot, and at regular times visit and pay it his devotions as long as he lives."—Catlin's North American Indians, vol. i., p. 36.

No. LIII.

Catlin says, "The tribes, so far as I have visited them, all distinctly believe in the existence of a Great (or Good) Spirit, an Evil (or Bad) Spirit, and also in a future existence and future accountability, according to their virtues and vices in this world. So far the North American Indians would seem to be one family, and such, an unbroken theory among them; yet, with regard to the manner and form, and time and place of that accountability—to the constructions of virtues and vices, and the modes of appeasing and propitiating the Good and Evil Spirits, they are found in all the change and variety which fortuitous circumstances, and fictions and fables have wrought upon them.... These people, living in a climate where they suffer from cold in the severity of their winters, have very naturally reversed our ideas of heaven and hell. The latter they describe to be a country very far to the north, of barren and hideous aspect, and covered with eternal snow and ice. The torments of this freezing place they describe as most excruciating, while heaven they suppose to be in a warmer and delightful latitude, where nothing is felt but the keenest enjoyment, and where the country abounds in buffaloes and other luxuries of life. The Great or Good Spirit they believe dwells in the former place, for the purpose of there meeting those who have offended him, increasing the agony of their sufferings by being himself present, administering the penalties. The Bad or Evil Spirit they suppose to be at the same time in Paradise, still tempting the happy; and those who have gone to the regions of punishment they believe to be tortured for a time proportioned to the amount of their transgression, and that they are then to be transferred to the land of the happy, where they are again liable to the temptation of the Evil Spirit, and answerable again at a future period for their new offenses."—Catlin, vol. i., p. 159.

Dr. Richardson says, "While at Carlton I took an opportunity of asking a communicative old Indian of the Blackfoot nation his opinion of a future state. He replied that they had heard from their fathers that the souls of the departed have to scramble with great labor up the sides of a steep mountain, upon attaining the summit of which they are rewarded with the prospect of an extensive plain, interspersed here and there with new tents, pitched in agreeable situations, and abounding in all sorts of game. While they are absorbed in the contemplation of this delightful scene, they are descried by the inhabitants of the happy land, who, clothed in new skins, approach and welcome, with every demonstration of kindness, those Indians who have led good lives; but the bad Indians, who have imbrued their hands in the blood of their countrymen, are told to return from whence they came, and, without more ceremony, precipitated down the steep sides of the mountain."—Franklin's Journey, p. 77.

"C'est du côté de l'ouest, d'où les sauvages prétendent être venus, qu'il placent le pays des ancêtres, ou des âmes. C'est, disent-ils, un pays très êloigné, et où chacun est contraint de se rendre, après son trèpas, par un chemin fort long et fort pénible, dans lequel il y a beaucoup à souffrir, à cause des rivières qu'il faut passer sur des ponts tremblants, et si étroits qu'il faut être une âme pour pouvoir s'y soûtenir; encore trouve-t-il au bout du pont un chien, qui comme un antre cerbère leur dispute le passage, et en fait tomber plusieurs dans les eaux, dont la rapidité les roule de précipice en précipice. Celles qui sont assez heureuses pour franchir ce pas, trouvent en arrivant, un grand et beau pays, au milieu duquel est une grande Cabane, dont Tharonhiaouagon, leur Dieu, occupe une partie, et Ataensic, son ayeule, occupe l'autre. L'appartement de cette vielle est tapissé d'une quantité infini de colliers de porcelaine, de bracelets, et d'autres meubles, dont les morts, qui sont sous sa dépendance, lui ont fait présent à leur arrivée. Ataensic est maîtresse de la Cabane, selon le style des sauvages, elle et son petit fils dominent sur les mânes, et font consister leur plaisir à les faire danser devant eux. Il y a une infinité de versions sur le pays des âmes, mais ce qui je viens d'en rapporter en est comme le fonds, où tout le reste se réduit."—Lafitau, tom. i., p. 402.

No. LIV.

"Un officier Français, qui parle la langue Huronne comme les Hurons même, et qui connoît fort bien le génie des sauvages, m'a raconté un fait, dont il a été le témoin ... Quelques sauvages intrigués, au sujet d'un parti de sept guerriers de leur village, et dont tout le monde commençoit à être en peine, prièrent une vielle sauvagesse de jongler pour eux. Cette femme étoit en grande réputation, et on avoit vérifié plusieurs de ses prédictions, mais on avoit beaucoup de peine à la déterminer à faire ces sortes d'opérations, quoiqu'on la payât bien, parce-qu'elle souffroit beaucoup. Comme elle avoit de l'amitié pour moi, dit cet officier, je me mis de la partie avec les sauvages, ajoutant néanmoins très peu de foy à ces sortes de choses, je la priai très fortement, et je fis tant, qu'elle s'y résolut. Elle commença d'abord par préparer un espace de terrain qu'elle nettoya bien, et qu'elle couvrit de farine. Elle disposa sur cette poudre comme sur une carte géographique, quelques paquets de buchettes, qui représentaient divers villages de différentes nations, observant particulièrement leur position, et les rhumbs de vent. Elle entra ensuite dans de grandes convulsions, pendant lesquelles nous vîmes sensiblement sept bluettes de feu sortir des buchettes qui représentoient notre village; tracer un chemin sur cette farine et aller d'un village à l'autre. Après d'être éclipsées pendant un assez long tems, dans l'un de ces villages, ces bluettes reparurent au nombre de neuf, tracèrent un nouveau chemin pour le retour, jusqú'à ce qu'enfin elles s'arrêtèrent assez près du village, ou paquet de buchettes, d'où les sept premièrs étoient d'abord sorties. Alors la sauvagesse, toujours en fureur, troubla tout l'ordre des buchettes, foula aux pieds tout le terrain qu'elle avoit préparé, et où cette scène venoit de passer. Elle s'assit ensuite et après s'être donné le tems de se tranquilliser, et de reprendre ses esprits, elle raconta tout ce qui étoit arrivè aux guerriers, la route qu'ils avoient tenue, les villages par où ils avoient passé, le nombre des prisonniers qu'ils avoient fait; elle nomma l'endroit où ils étoient dans ce moment, et assura qu'ils arriveroient trois jours après au village, ce qui fut vérifié par l'arrivée des guerriers, qui confirmèrent de point en point ce qu'elle avoit dit."—Lafitau, tom. i., p. 387.

"Quoiqu' aujourd'hui les Abénaquis fassent tous profession du Christianisme, ils ne laissent pas encore d'avoir quelquefois recours à cet art qu'ils ont reçû de leurs pères (la Pyromantie, ou Divination par le feu). Ils s'en confessent néanmoins, à cause de l'horreur qu'on leur en a inspiré, mais il s'en trouve quelques uns qui cherchent à le justifier. Une sauvagesse disoit à un missionnaire, qui tâchoit de lui faire concevoir sa faute: 'Je n'ai jamais compris qu'il n'y eût à elle aucun mal, et j'ai peine à y en voir encore: écoute, Dieu a partagé différemment les hommes; à vous autres François, il a donné l'écriture, par laquelle vous apprennez lea choses qui se passent loin de vous, comme si elles vous étoient présentes; pour ce qui est de nous, il nous a donné l'art de connoître par le feu les choses absentes et eloignées; suppose donc que le feu c'est notre livre, notre écriture; tu ne verras pas qu'il y ait de différence, et plus de mal dans l'un que dans l'autre. Ma mère m'a appris ce secret pendant mon enfance, comme tes parents t'ont appris à lire et à écrire; je m'en suis servi plusieurs fois avec succès, avant d'être Chrètienne, je l'ai fait quelquefois avec le même succès depuis que je la suis; j'ai éte tenté, et j'ai succombé à la tentation, mais sans croire commettre aucune péché.'"—Lafitau, tom, i., p. 388.

Some of the Indians seem to have been acquainted with the mysteries of clairvoyance. "Ils croyent qu'il y a des personnes que les esprits favorisent d'avantage, qui sont plus éclairées que le commun, dont l'âme sçut, non seulement ce qui les concerne personnellement, mais qui voient jusques dans le fonds de l'âme des autres, qui percent à travers le voile qui les couvre, et y apperçoit les désirs naturels et innés, qu'elle a, quoique cette âme elle même ne les ait pas aperçus; c'est ce qui leur a fait donner le nom de Iaïotkatta par les Hurons, c'est á dire voyans, parce qu'ils voyent les hommes dans leur intérieur."—Lafitau, tom. i., p. 371.

Charlevoix also relates instances of the successful exercise of magical arts.—Vol. vi., p. 92.

No. LV.

"In the neighborhood of Caughnawaga are the large tracts of land once belonging to the Johnson family, whose possessions were all confiscated at the period of the Revolution, in consequence of their adherence to the British, who gave them compensation by grants of land in Canada. The founder of this family is said to have acquired this fine tract of country by a dexterous piece of management. He traded extensively with the tribe of Mohawk Indians. Their chiefs were in the habit of applying to him frequently for tobacco and rum, which they had, they told him, dreamed that he was to give them. Johnson never failed to encourage their strong faith in dreams, humoring their foible by acceding to every request founded on them. Thus visits and dreams became frequent on the part of the Indians. Johnson never sent them away empty handed. To every request he replied, 'I will prove that you are right,' and presented them with whatever they applied for, on the footing that they had dreamed of it. At length the king had the conscience to dream that, if he were invested with Johnson's military dress of scarlet and gold, he should be as great a man as King George; and King George he soon in so far became, for no long time elapsed before Johnson had him appareled as he wished. But Johnson's turn to dream had now arrived, for he had all the while attached the same weight to dreams. He dreamed that the nation had, in consequence of his kindness to them, and in return for the hospitality he had shown them, bestowed on him part of their territory, which he had described, and which he of course took care should be sufficiently extensive and valuable—in fact, one of the finest tracts of land that it is possible to conceive. 'Have you really had such a dream?' they exclaimed, with terror and alarm depicted on their countenances. Being satisfied on this point, the chief or king convoked his tribe, who deliberated, and then announced to the dreamer that they had confirmed the dream. 'Brother Johnson,' they said, 'we give thee that tract of land, but never dream any more.' The head of this family was subsequently created a baronet, for his gallantry in the war, when the French made an incursion from Canada in 1755."—Stuart's America, vol. i., p. 71. See, also, Mrs. Grant's Letters of an American Lady, for an account of Sir William Johnson's intercourse with the Indians.

Lafitau and Charlevoix write at great length upon the Indian faith in dreams; Lafitau gives the following curious illustration of the extent to which this superstition is carried: "Un ancien missionnaire m'a raconté qu'un sauvage ayant rêvé que le bonheur de sa vie dépendoit de son mariage avec une femme qui étoit déjà mariée à l'un des plus considérables du village où il demeuroit. Le mari et la femme vivoient dans une grande union et s'entre-aimoient beaucoup. La séparation fut rude à l'un et à l'autre, cependant ils n'osoient refuser. Ils se séparèrent donc. La femme prit un nouvel engagement, et le mari abandonné, par complaisance et pour ôter tout soupçon qu'il pensât encore à sa première épouse, se marie avec une autre. Il reprit la première cependant, après la mort de celui qui les avait désunis, laquelle arriva peu de temps après."—Lafitau, vol. i., p. 364.

No. LVI.

"C'étoit une loi générale chez certains peuples barbares de l'antiquité (Ælian, de Cois, lib. iii.; Sext. Emp., de Tybaren.; Procop., de Etulis., lib. ii.; de Bello Gotico; Stobæus, de Massag., Serm. 122) de faire mourir leurs viellards avant l'âge de soixante ou soixante et dix ans, soit qu'ils ne voulassent point parmis eux conserver des morte payes, qui consumassent le peu qui restoit aux autres pour vivre: soit qu'ils se persuadassent rendre service à ceux qu'ils faisoient ainsi périr, en leur épargnant par une morte prompte et courte, la tristesse et les ennuis d'un âge avancé, dont les infirmités peuvent être regardées comme une mort continuelle. Cela a été, dit-on, une loi générale parmi quelques peuples de l'Amérique, et une de nos dernières relations porte, qu'il y a une nation où il n'est pas même permis de laisser passer aux femmes l'âge de trente ans; ce qui paroitra sans doute bien rigoureux à celles qui veulent encore être jeune dans un âge plus avancé.

"Les Algonquins et les autres nations errantes sont plus sujets à cette inhumanité envers les viellards que les autres, parcequ' étant presque toujours en voyage, et plus souvent réduits à la faim, l'incommodité des viellards qu'il faut porter et nourrir, devient alors plus sensible. Ces pauvres malheureux sont souvent les premiers à dire à celui qui les porte, 'Mon petit fils, je le donne bien de la peine, je ne suis plus bon à rien, casse-moi la tête.' On ne les écoute pas toujours; mais quelquefois aussi il arrive que le jeune homme epuisé de lassitude et de faim, répond froidement, 'Tu as raison, mon grand père.' Il décharge en même tems son paquet, prend sa hache, et casse la tête au bon homme, qui sans doute est faché intérieurement d'être pris au mot."—Lafitau, tom. ii., p. 490.

In 1819, James writes thus of the same inhuman custom: "The worst trait in the Indian character is the neglect shown toward the aged and helpless, which is carried to such a degree that, when on a march or a hunting excursion, it is a common practice to leave behind their nearest relations when reduced to that state, with a little food and water, abandoning them without ceremony to their fate. When thus abandoned by all that is dear to them, their fortitude does not forsake them, and the inflexible passive courage of the Indian sustains them against despondency. They regard themselves as entirely useless; and as the custom of the nation has long led them to anticipate this mode of death, they attempt not to remonstrate against the measure, which is, in fact, frequently the result of their earnest solicitation."—James's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, vol. i., p. 237.

"This cruelty to living relations strongly contrasts with the extravagance and self-sacrifice of their mourning for the dead. The same people who expose a living parent because they can not carry him, are often found to convey the corpses of their departed friends to 'the festivals of the dead,' during many days of wearisome journeying."—P. de Brebœuf, Relation de la Nouvelle France; Charlevoix: Lafitau.

Catlin, one of the most partial observers, and the most zealous defender of the Indian character, relates the following scene, of which he was an eye-witness (in 1840): "We found that the Puncahs were packing up all their goods, and preparing to start for the prairies in pursuit of buffaloes, to dry meat for their winter's supplies. They took down their wigwams of skins to carry with them, and all were flat to the ground, and every thing packing up ready for the start. My attention was directed by Major Sanford, the Indian agent, to one of the most miserable and helpless-looking objects I ever had seen in my life—a very aged and emaciated man of the tribe, who, he told me, was going to be exposed. The tribe were going where hunger and dire necessity obliged them to go, and this pitiable object, who had once been a chief, and a man of distinction in his tribe, who was now too old to travel, being reduced to mere skin and bone, was to be left to starve, or meet with such death as might fall to his lot, and his bones to be picked by the wolves! I lingered around this poor old forsaken patriarch for hours before we started, to indulge the tears of sympathy which were flowing for the sake of this poor benighted and decrepit old man, whose worn-out limbs were no longer able to support him, and his body and his mind doomed to linger into the withering agony of decay, and gradual solitary death. I wept; and it was a pleasure to weep; for the painful looks and the dreary prospects of this old veteran, whose eyes were dimmed, whose venerable locks were whitened by a hundred years, whose limbs were almost naked, and trembling as he sat by a small fire which his friends had left him, with a few sticks of wood within his reach, and a buffalo's skin stretched upon some crotches over his head. Such was to be his only dwelling, and such the chances for his life, with only a few half-picked bones that were laid within his reach, and a dish of water, without means of any kind to replenish them, or move his body from that fatal locality. His friends and his children had all left him, and were preparing in a little time to be on the march. He had told them to leave him; 'he was old,' he said, 'and too feeble to march.' 'My children,' said he, 'our nation is poor, and it is necessary you should all go to the country where you can get meat. My eyes are dimmed, and my strength is no more; my days are nearly all numbered, and I am a burden to my children; I can not go, and I wish to die. Keep your hearts stout, and think not of me; I am no longer good for any thing.' In this way they had finished the ceremony of exposing him, and taken their final leave of him. I advanced to the old man, and was undoubtedly the last human being who held converse with him. I sat by the side of him, and though he could not distinctly see me, he shook me heartily by the hand, and smiled, evidently aware that I was a white man, and that I sympathized with his inevitable misfortune. When passing by the site of the Puncah village a few months after this in my canoe, I went ashore with my men, and found the poles and the buffalo skin standing as they were left over the old man's head. The fire-brands were lying nearly as I had left them; and I found at a few yards' distance the skull and others of his bones, which had been picked and cleaned by the wolves, which is probably all that any human being can ever know of his final and melancholy fate. This cruel custom of exposing their aged people belongs, I think, to all the tribes who roam about the prairies, making severe marches, when such decrepit persons are totally unable to go, unable to ride or to walk, when they have no means of carrying them."—Catlin's American Indians, vol. i., p. 217.

No. LVII.

"The child, in its earliest infancy, has its back lashed to a straight board, being fastened to it by bandages, which pass around it in front, and on the back of the board they are tightened to the necessary degree by lacing-strings, which hold it in a straight and healthy position, with its feet resting on a broad hoop, which passes around the foot of the cradle, and the child's position (as it rides about on its mother's back, supported by a broad strap that passes across her forehead), that of standing erect, no doubt has a tendency to produce straight limbs, sound lungs, and long life. The bandages that pass around the cradle, holding the child in, are often covered with a beautiful embroidery of porcupine quills, with ingenious figures of horses, men, &c. A broad hoop of elastic wood passes around in front of the child's face to protect it in case of a fall, from the front of which is suspended a toy of exquisite embroidery for the child to handle, and amuse itself with. The papoose (the Indian name for the cradle) seems a cruel mode of confining the child; but I am inclined to believe it is a very good one for those who use it, and well adapted to the circumstances under which they live; in support of which opinion, I offer the universality of the custom, which has been practiced for centuries among all the tribes of North America, as a legitimate and a very strong reason. Along the frontiers, where the Indians have been ridiculed for the custom, they have in many instances departed from it; but even there they will generally be seen lugging their child about in this way, when they have abandoned almost every other native custom, and are too poor to cover it with more than rags and strings, which fasten it to its cradle. The infant is carried in this manner until it is five, six, or seven months old.... If the infant dies during the time allotted for it to be carried in this cradle, it is buried, and the disconsolate mother fills the cradle with black quills and feathers, in the parts which the child's body had occupied, and in this way carries it about with her wherever she goes for a year or more; and she often lays or stands it against the side of the wigwam, where she is all day engaged in her needle-work, and chatting and talking to it as familiarly and affectionately as if it were her loved infant instead of its shell that she was talking to."—Catlin, vol. ii., p. 133.

No. LVIII.

The following is Lafitau's description of this barbarous operation: "Ils cernent pour cet effet la peau qui couvre la crâne, coupant au-dessus du front et des oreilles jusqu'au derrière de la tête. Après l'avoir arrachée, ils la préparent, et la ramollissent comme ils ont coûtume de faire a celles des bêtes qu'ils ont prises à la chasse. Ils étendent ensuite cette peau sur un cercle au ils l'attachent, ils la peignent des deux côtés de diverses couleurs, quelquefois ils tracent du côté opposé aux cheveux, le portrait de celui à qui ils l'ont enlevée at la suspendent au bout d'une perche et la portent ainsi en triomphe. Ce qu'il y a de surprenant, c'est que tous ceux à qui l'on fait cette cruelle opération de leur enlever la chevelure, n'en meurent point, non plus que du coup de casse-tête, dont on a crû les avoir assommés à n'en plus revenir. Plusieurs en sont réchappés et j'ai vu une femme dans notre mission, à qui après un semblable accident, les François avoient donnée le nom de la Tête-pelée, et qui se portoit fort bien. Elle étoit mariée à un François Iroquoisé, dont elle avoit des enfans." Lafitau does not omit to notice the striking similarity between Indian and Scythian barbarity; he cites the following passage from Herodotus as a support and illustration of his own peculiar theory: "Un Scythe boit du sang du premier prisonnier qu'il fait, et il présente au roi les têtes de tous ceux qu'il a tués dans le combat; car en portant une tête il a part au butier, auquel il n'a nul droit sans cette condition. Il coupe la tête de cette manière. Il la cerne autour les oreilles et ayant séparé le test d'avec le reste, il en arrache la peau, qu'il a soin de ramollir avec ses mains, et d'apprêter comme un apprête une peau de bœuf. Il en fait ensuite un ornement, et l'attache au harnois de son cheval en guise de trophèe. Plus un particulier a de ces sortes de dépouilles, plus il est considéré et estimé."—Lafitau, tom. ii., 258; Herodotus, lib. iv., n. 64.

"The scalping is an operation not calculated of itself to take life, as it only removes the skin, without injuring the bone of the head, and necessarily, to be a genuine scalp, must contain and show the crown and center of the head—that part of the skin which lies directly over what the phrenologists call 'self-esteem,' where the hair divides and radiates from the center, of which they all profess to be strict judges, and able to decide whether an effort has been made to produce two or more scalps from one head. Besides taking the scalp, the victor generally, if he has time to do it without endangering his own scalp, cuts off and brings home the rest of the hair, which his knife will divide into a great many small locks, and with them fringe the seams of his shirt and leggins, which also are worn as trophies and ornaments to the dress, and these are familiarly called 'scalp-locks.' ... As the scalp is taken in evidence of a death, it will easily be seen that an Indian has no business or inclination to take it from the head of the living, which I venture to say is never done in North America, unless it be, as has sometimes happened, when a man falls in the heat of battle, and the Indian, rushing over his body, snatches off his scalp, supposing him dead, who afterward rises from the field of battle, and easily recovers from this superficial wound of the knife, wearing a bald spot on his head during the remainder of his life."—Catlin, vol. i., p. 238.

No. LIX.

Charlevoix gives the following account of some of the games of chance in use among the red Indians:

"Le Jeu de Pailles.—Ces pailles sont de petits joncs de la grosseur des tuyaux de froment et de la longueur de deux doigts. On en prend un paquet, qui est ordinairement de deux cent un, et toujours en nombre impair. Après qu'on les a bien remués, en faisant mille contortions, et en invoquant les génies, on les sépare avec une espèce d'aliene, ou un os pointee, en paquets de dix; chacun prend le sien à l'aventure, et celui, à qui échoit le paquet de onze, gagne un certain nombre de points, dont on est convenu: les parties sont en soixante ou en quatre vingt.... On m'a dit qu'il y avoit autant d'addresse que de hazarde dans ce jeu, et que les sauvages y sont extremement fripons, comme dans tous les autres; qu'ils s'y acharnent souvent jusqu'à y passer les jours et les nuits.

"Le Jeu de la Crosse.—On y joue avec une bale et des bâtons, recourbés et terminés par une espèce de raquette. On dresse deux poteaux qui servent des bornes, et qui sont éloignés l'un de l'autre, à proportion du nombre des joueurs. Par exemple s'ils sont quatre vingt, il y a entre les poteaux une demie lieue de distance. Les joueurs sont partagés en deux bandes, qui ont chacune leur poteau, et il s'agit de faire aller la bale jusqu'à celui de la partie adverse, sans qu'elle tombe à terre, et sans qu'elle soit touchée avec la main; car si l'un ou l'autre arrive on perd la partie, à moins que celui qui a fait la faute ne la répare, en faisant aller la bale d'un seul trait au but, ce qui est souvent impossible. Ces sauvages sont si adroits à prendre la bale avec leurs crosses, que quelquefois ces parties durent plusieurs jours de suite.

"Le Jeu du Plat, appellé aussi le Jeu des Osselets.—Il ne se joue qu'entre deux personnes. Chacun a six ou huit osselets, que je pris d'abord pour des noyaux d'abricots; els en ont la figure et sont de même grandeur, mais en les regardant de près je m'aperçus qu'ils étoient à six faces inégales, dont les deux principales sont peintes, l'une en noir, l'autre en blanc tirant sur le jaune. On les fait sauter en l'air, en frappant la terre, ou la table, avec un plat rond et creux, où ils sont, et qu'ils font pirouetter auparavant. Si tous en tombant présentent la même couleur, celui qui a joué gagne cinq points, la partie est en quarante, et on défalque les points gagnés, à mesure que l'adversaire en gagne de son côté. Cinq osselets d'une même couleur ne donnent qu'un point pour la première fois, mais à la seconde on fait rafle de tout. En moindre nombre on ne gagne rien. Celui, qui gagne la partie, continue de jouer; le perdant cède sa place à un autre, qui est nommé par les marqueurs de sa partie. Car on se partage d'abord, et souvent tout le village s'intéresse au jeu: quelquefois même un village joue contre un autre. Chaque partie choisit son marqueur, mais il se retire quand il veut, ce qui n'arrive que lorsque la chose tourne mal pour les siens. À chaque coup que l'on joue, surtout si c'est un coup décisif, il s'élève de grands cris: les joueurs paroissent comme des fascinés, et les spectateurs ne sont pas plus tranquils."—Charlevoix, vol. v., p. 386; vol. vi., p. 26.

No. LX.

"The action in which Sir Richard met with his death is so extraordinary that it well merits recital: its object was to surprise the Spanish fleet when it rendezvoused at the Azores, on its return from America. For this purpose, Lord Thomas Howard sailed from England with six of the queen's ships, six victualers, and some pinnaces, Sir Richard Grenville being vice admiral in the Revenge. Having set out in the spring, 1591, they waited six months at Flores in expectation of their prize. Philip, however, obtaining intelligence of their design, dispatched Don Alphonso Barcau with fifty-three ships of war to act as convoy. So secure had the English become by protracted delay, that this armament was bearing down upon them before they had the least suspicion of its approach. Most of the crews were on shore, providing water, ballast, and other necessaries, and many were disabled by sickness. To hurry on board, weigh anchor, and leave the place with the utmost speed, was their only safety; and Grenville, upon whom the charge of the details at this pressing crisis was imposed, was the last upon the spot, superintending the embarkation, and receiving his men on board, of whom ninety were on the sick-list, and only one hundred able for duty. Thus detained, he found it impossible to recover the wind, and there was no alternative but either to cut his mainsail, tack about, and fly with all speed, or remain and fight it out single handed. It was to this desperate resolution that he adhered. 'From the greatness of his spirit,' says Raleigh, 'he utterly refused to turn from the enemy, protesting he would rather die than be guilty of such dishonor to himself, his country, and her majesty's ship.' His design was to force the squadron of Seville, which was on his weather bow, to give way; and such was the impetuosity of his attack, that it was on the point of being successful. Divers of the Spaniards, springing their loof, as the sailors of those times termed it, fell under his lee; when the San Philip, a galleon of 1500 tons, gained the wind, and coming down on the Revenge, becalmed her sails so completely that she could neither make way nor obey the helm. The enemy carried three tier of guns on each side, and discharged eight foreright from her chase, besides those of her stern ports. At the moment Sir Richard was thus entangled, four other galleons loofed up and boarded him, two on his larboard and two on his starboard. The close fight began at three in the afternoon, and continued, with some slight intermission, for fifteen hours, during which time, Grenville, unsupported, sustained the reiterated attacks of fifteen Spanish ships, the rest not being able to engage in close fire. The unwieldy San Philip, having received a broadside from the lower tier of the Revenge, shifted with all speed, and avoided the repetition of such a salute; but still, as one was beaten off, another supplied the vacant space. Two galleons were sunk, and two others so handled as to lie complete wrecks upon the water; yet it was evident no human power could save Sir Richard's vessel. Although wounded in the beginning of the action, its brave commander refused, for eight hours, to leave the upper deck. He was then shot through the body, and as his wound was dressing he received another musket ball, and saw the surgeon slain at his side. Such was the state of things during the night; but the darkness concealed the full extent of the calamity. As the day broke, a melancholy spectacle presented itself. 'Now,' says Raleigh, 'was to be seen nothing but the naked hull of a ship, and that almost a skeleton, having received eight hundred shot of great artillery, and some under water; her deck covered with the limbs and carcasses of forty valiant men, the rest all wounded, and painted with their own blood; her masts beat overboard; all her tackle cut asunder; her upper works raised and level with the water, and she herself incapable of receiving any direction or motion except that given her by the heaving billows.' At this moment Grenville proposed to sink the vessel, and trust to the mercy of God rather than fall into the hands of the Spaniards—a resolution in which he was joined by the master gunner and a part of the crew; but the rest refused to consent, and compelled their captain to surrender. Faint with the loss of blood, and, like his ship, shattered with repeated wounds, this brave man soon after expired, with these remarkable words: 'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen, religion, and honor.'"—Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of the Azores, 4to, 1501, quoted in Tytler's "Life of Raleigh."

No. LXI.

"Pocahontas, before her marriage, was instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, which she cordially embraced, and was baptized by the name of Rebecca. Soon after, she set sail to visit England. As soon as Smith heard of her arrival, he sent a letter to the queen, recounting all her services to himself and to the nation, assuring her majesty that she had a great spirit, though a low stature, and earnestly soliciting her majesty's kindness and courtesy. Mrs. Rolfe was accordingly introduced, and well received at court. At first James fancied that Rolfe, in marrying her, might be advancing a claim to the crown of Virginia; however, by great pains, this idea was at last driven out of his brains. Mrs. Rolfe was for some time, as a novelty, the favorite object in the circles of fashion and nobility. On her introduction into these, she deported herself with a grace and propriety which, it is said, many ladies, bred with every advantage of education and society, could not equal. Purchas mentions meeting her at the table of his patron, Dr. King, bishop of London, where she was entertained 'with festival state and pomp,' beyond what, at his hospitable board, was shown to other ladies. She carried herself as the daughter of a king, and was respected as such. She was accompanied by Vitamokomakkin, an Indian chief and priest, who had married one of her sisters, and had been sent to attend her. Purchas saw him repeatedly 'sing and dance his diabolical measures.' He endeavored to persuade this chief to follow the example of his sister-in-law, and embrace Christianity, but found him 'a blasphemer of what he knew not, preferring his God to ours.' He insisted that their Okee, having taught them to plant, sow, and wear a cork twisted round their left ear, was entitled to their undivided homage. Powhatan had instructed him to bring back every information respecting England, and particularly to count the number of people, furnishing him for that purpose with a bundle of sticks, that he might make a notch for every man. Vitamokomakkin, the moment he landed at Plymouth, was appalled at the magnitude of the task before him; however, he continued notching most indefatigably all the way to London; but the instant that he entered Piccadilly, he threw away the sticks, and on returning, desired Powhatan to count the leaves on the trees, and the sand on the sea-shore. He also told Smith that he had special instructions to see the English god, their king, their queen, and their prince. Smith could do nothing for him as to the first particular; but he was taken to the levee, and saw the other three, when he complained bitterly that none of them had made him any present. As soon as Smith learned that Pocahontas was settled in a house at Brentford, which she had chosen in order to be out of the smoke of London, he hastened to wait upon her. His reception was very painful. The princess turned from him, hid her face, and for two hours could by no effort be induced to utter a word. A certain degree of mystery appears to hang on the origin of this deadly offense. Her actual reproaches, when she found her speech, rested on having heard nothing of him since he left Virginia, and on having been assured there that he was dead. Prevost has taken upon him to say that the breach of plighted love was the ground of this resentment, and that it was only on believing that death had dissolved the connection between them that she had been induced to marry another. I can not in any of the original writers meet with the least trace of this alleged vow, and should be sorry to find in Smith the false lover of the fair Pocahontas. It would not also have been much in unison with her applauded discretion to have resented a wrong of this nature in such a time and manner. I am persuaded that this love was a creation of the romantic brain of Prevost, and that the real ground of her displeasure was, that during the two years when she was so shamefully kept in durance, she had heard nothing of any intercession made in her favor by one whom she had laid under such deep obligation, and really the thing seems to require some explanation. It appears that when Smith at last was able to draw speech from the indignant fair one, he succeeded in satisfying her that there had been no such neglect as she apprehended, and she insisted on calling him by the name of father.

"It is said that Pocahontas departed from London with the most favorable impressions, and with every honor, her husband being appointed Secretary and Recorder General of Virginia. But Providence had not destined that she should ever revisit her native shore. As she went down to embark at Gravesend she was seized with illness, and died in a few days. Her end is described to have edified extremely all the spectators, and to have been full of Christian resignation and hope."—Murray's America. See Smith, in Pinkerton, vol. xiii., p. 120-123; Beverley; Prevost, Hist. Gen. des Voyages, vol. xiv., p. 471; Purchas, vol. iv., 1774.

No. LXII.

"The historians of Virginia have left some records respecting this unfortunate race, who have not even left behind a relic of their name or nation. A rude agriculture, devolved solely on the women; hunting, pursued with activity and skill, but rather as a pastime than a toil; strong attachment of the members of the little communities to each other, but deadly enmity against all their neighbors, and this manifesting itself in furious wars—these features belong to the Virginians, in common with almost every form of savage life. There are others which are more distinctive. Although a rude independence has been supposed to be, and in many cases is, the peculiar boast of the savage, yet, when a yoke of opinion and authority has once been established over his mind, he yields a submission more entire and more blind than is rendered to the most absolute of Eastern despots. Such a sway had the King of Virginia. 'When he listeth,' says Smith, 'his will is a law, and must be obeyed; not only as a king, but as half a god they esteem him. What he commandeth they dare not disobey in the least thing. It is strange to see with what great fear and adoration all this people do adore this Powhatan; at the least frown of his brow their greatest spirits will tremble with fear.' Powhatan (father of the celebrated Pocahontas; see Appendix, No. LXI.) had under him a number of chiefs, who ruled as supreme within their own circle; and they were so numerous, and covered so large an extent of territory, that Powhatan is often dignified by Europeans with the title of emperor.

"The priests and conjurers formed a separate order, and enjoyed that high influence which marks a certain advance in the social state. They possessed some knowledge of nature, and of the history and traditions of their country, superior, at least, to that of their ruder countrymen. Their temples were numerous, formed on a similar plan to those of Florida, and each served by one or more priests.

"Beverley was the man who made the most close inquiry into the Virginian mythology. He did not meet with all the success he wished, finding them excessively mysterious on the subject. Having got hold, however, of an intelligent Indian, and plied him heartily with strong cider, he at last got him to open his heart in some degree. As he declared his belief in a wise, perfect, and supremely beneficent being, who dwelt in the heavens, Beverley asked him how then he could confine his worship to the devil, a wicked, ugly, earthly being. The Indian said that they were secure as to the good being, who would shower down his blessings without asking any return; but that the evil spirit was perpetually busy and meddling, and would spoil all if court were not paid to him. Beverley, however, pressed upon him how he could think that an insensible log, 'a helpless thing, equipped with a burden of clouts,' could ever be a proper object of worship. The visage of the Indian now assumed a very marked and embarrassed expression. After a long pause, he began to utter, in broken sentences, 'It is the priests;' then, after another pause, 'It is the priests;' but 'a qualm crossed his conscience,' and he would say no more.

"Beverley had been so well informed upon this last point, in consequence of a favorable accident of which he had availed himself. While the whole town were assembled to deliberate upon some great state affair, he was ranging the woods, and stumbled upon their great temple. He resolved not to lose so favorable an occasion. After removing about fourteen logs, with which the door was barricadoed, he entered the mansion, which appeared at first to consist only of a large, empty, dark apartment, with a fire-place in the middle, and set round with posts, crowned with carved or painted heads. On closer observation, he at length discovered a recess, with mats hung before it, and involved in the deepest darkness. With some hesitation he ventured into this wondrous sanctuary, where he found the materials, which, on being put together, made up Okee, Kiwasee, or Mioceos, the mighty Indian idol. The main body consisted of a large plank, to whose edges were nailed half hoops, to represent the breast and belly. Long rolls of blue and red cotton cloth, variously twisted, made arms and legs, the latter of which were represented in a bent position. The reputation of the god was chiefly supported by the very dim religious light under which he was viewed, and which enabled also the conjurer to get behind him, and move his person in such a manner as might be favorable to the extension of his influence, while the priest in front, by the most awful menaces, deterred any from approaching so near as might lead to any revelation of the interior mysteries.

"Smith alleges against the Virginians that they made a yearly sacrifice of a certain number of children; but it appears clear, from the statements of Beverley, that he misunderstood, in this sense, the practice of huskenawing, a species of severe probation through which those were required to pass who desired either to be chiefs or priests. On this occasion, after various preparatory ceremonies, the children are led naked through two lines of men, armed with bastinadoes, which are employed with great rigor against the victims, who, after running through this gauntlet, are more dead than alive, and are covered with boughs and leaves of trees. If any expire under this trial, it is esteemed that the Okee has fixed his heart upon him, and carried him off. The rest are conveyed into the depths of a wood, and shut up into a cage or pen, where they are plied with intoxicating drugs till they are said to become for several weeks actually deranged. By this process they are supposed completely to lose all memory of what they have seen and known in their former life, and to begin a new and brighter era. They must not, on their return home, recognize their nearest friends or comrades, the most common objects, nor even know a word of their own language; all must be learned afresh. If any indications of memory escape, the youth must pass again through the dreadful ordeal. Above all, he must be careful not to have retained the slightest recollection of any property he may have possessed, and which the neighbors usually consider a favorable opportunity to appropriate.

"These Indians had not the least tincture of science, nor, of course, used any form of writing. They made, however, paintings of animals and other natural objects, by the form and natural position of which information was transmitted; but it is to be regretted that none of the Virginian paintings have been preserved to compare with those of the Mexicans."—Murray's America, vol. i., p. 235. See History of Virginia, by R. Beverley, a native and inhabitant of the place. 8vo. London, 1702.

No. LXIII.

The following is Hennepin's account of the voyage of the first vessel built by Europeans on the American lakes:

"It now became necessary for La Salle, in furtherance of his object, to construct a vessel above the Falls of Niagara sufficiently large to transport the men and goods necessary to carry on a profitable trade with the savages residing on the Western lakes. On the 22d of January, 1679, they went six miles above the falls to the mouth of a small creek, and there built a dock convenient for the construction of their vessel.[229]

"On the 26th of January, the keel and other pieces being ready, La Salle requested Father Hennepin to drive the first bolt, but the modesty of the good father's profession prevented.

"During the rigorous winter La Salle determined to return to Fort Frontenac;[230] and leaving the dock in charge of an Italian named Chevalier Tuti, he started, accompanied by Father Hennepin, as far as Lake Ontario; from thence he traversed the dreary forests to Frontenac on foot, with only two companions and a dog, which drew his baggage on a sled, subsisting on nothing but parched corn, and even that failed him two days' journey from the fort. In the mean time, the building of the vessel went on under the suspicious eyes of the neighboring savages, although the most part of them had gone to war beyond Lake Erie. One of them, feigning intoxication, attempted the life of the blacksmith, who defended himself successfully with a red-hot bar of iron. The timely warning of a friendly squaw averted the burning of their vessel on the stocks, which was designed by the savages. The workmen were almost disheartened by frequent alarms, and would have abandoned the work had they not been cheered by the good father, who represented the great advantage their perseverance would afford, and how much their success would redound to the glory of God. These and other inducements accelerated the work, and the vessel was soon ready to be launched, though not entirely finished. Chanting Te Deum, and firing three guns, they committed her to the river amid cries of joy, and swung their hammocks in security from the wild beasts and still more dreaded Indians.

"When the Senecas returned from their expedition they were greatly astonished at the floating fort, 'which struck terror among all the savages who lived on the great lakes and river within 1500 miles.' Hennepin ascended the river in a bark canoe with one of his companions as far as Lake Erie. They twice pulled the canoe up the rapids, and sounded the lake for the purpose of ascertaining the depth. He reported that with a favorable north or northwest wind the vessel could ascend to the lake, and then sail without difficulty over its whole extent. Soon after, the vessel was launched in the current of Niagara, about four and a half miles from the lake. Hennepin left it for Fort Frontenac, and, returning with La Salle and two other fathers, Gabriel and Zenobe Mambre, anchored in the Niagara on the 30th of July, 1769. On the 4th of August they reached the dock where the ship was built, which he calls distant eighteen miles from Lake Ontario, and proceeded from thence in a bark canoe to their vessel, which they found at anchor three miles from the 'beautiful Lake Erie.'

"The vessel was of sixty tons burden, completely rigged, and found with all the necessaries, arms, provisions, and merchandise; it had seven small pieces of cannon on board, two of which were of brass. There was a griffin flying at the jib-boom, and an eagle above. There were also all the ordinary ornaments and other fixtures which usually grace a ship of war.

"They endeavored many times to ascend the current of the Niagara into Lake Erie without success, the wind not being strong enough. While they were thus detained La Salle employed a few of his men in clearing some land on the Canadian shore opposite the vessel, and in sowing some vegetable seeds for the benefit of those who might inhabit the place.

"At length, the wind being favorable, they lightened the vessel by sending most of the crew on shore, and with the aid of their sails and ten or a dozen men at the tow-lines, ascended the current into Lake Erie. Thus, on the 7th of August, 1679, the first vessel set sail on the untried waters of Lake Erie. They steered southward after having chanted their never-failing Te Deum, and discharged their artillery in the presence of a vast number of Seneca warriors. It had been reported to our voyagers that Lake Erie was full of breakers and sandbanks, which rendered a safe navigation impossible; they therefore kept the lead going, sounding from time to time.

"After sailing without difficulty through Lake Erie, they arrived on the 11th of August at the mouth of the Detroit River, sailing up which they arrived at Lake St. Clair, to which they gave the name it bears. After being detained several days by contrary winds at the bottom of the St. Clair River, they at length succeeded in entering Lake Huron on the 23d of August, chanting Te Deum through gratitude for a safe navigation thus far. Passing along the eastern shore of the lake, they sailed with a fresh and favorable wind until evening, when the wind suddenly veered, driving them across Saginaw Bay (Sacinaw). The storm raged until the 24th, and was succeeded by a calm, which continued until next day noon (25th), when they pursued their course until midnight. As they doubled a point which advanced into the lake, they were suddenly struck by a furious wind, which forced them to run behind the cape for safety. On the 26th the violence of the storm compelled them to send down their top-masts and yards and to stand in, for they could find neither anchorage nor shelter.

"It was then the stout heart of La Salle failed him; the whole crew fell upon their knees to say their prayers and prepare for death, except the pilot, whom they could not compel to follow their example, and who, on the contrary, 'did nothing all that time but curse and swear against M. la Salle, who had brought him thither to make him perish in a nasty lake, and lose the glory he had acquired by his long and happy navigation on the ocean.' On the 27th, favored with less adverse winds, they arrived during the night at Michillimackinack, and anchored in the bay, where they report six fathoms of water and a clay bottom. This bay is protected on the southwest, west, and northwest, but open to the south. The savages were struck dumb with astonishment at the size of their vessel and the noise of their guns.

"Here they regaled themselves on the delicious trout, which they described as being from 50 lbs. to 60 lbs. in weight, and as affording the savages their principal subsistence. On the 2d of September they left Mackinack, entered Lake Michigan (Illinois), and sailed forty leagues to an island at the mouth of the Bay of Puara (Green Bay). From this place La Salle determined to send back the ship laden with furs to Niagara. The pilot and five men embarked in her, and on the 10th she fired a gun and set sail on her return with a favorable wind. Nothing more was heard from her, and she undoubtedly foundered in Lake Huron, with all on board. Her cargo was rich, and valued at 60,000 livres.

"Thus ended the first voyage of the first ship that sailed over the Western lakes. What a contrast is presented between the silent waves and unbroken forests which witnessed the course of that adventurous bark, and the busy hum of commerce which now rises from the fertile bottoms, and the thousand ships and smoking palaces which now furrow the surface of those inland seas!"—American Tourist.