[Language Use]
Their language is also that of nature, and they speak out what they think. They do not use circumlocution to avoid an indecent term, nor have they flourishes to embellish their discourses. And their speeches, to my taste at least, are far more pleasing and natural than those strained and laboured compositions we meet with amongst ourselves. But this is not the place for these discussions.
[Conversations]
April 4th, 1823. There is a sick Indian with me whom I have been obliged to feed with his whole family all winter, not being able to endure the cold on his lungs, and in a manner deserted by his friends. To get as near the truth as I can possibly do in all things relating to their mythology, I frequently converse with him on these subjects. And when not forbidden by his Dreamed or familiars, [he] is explicit enough. A few nights back he thus informed me upon the several questions I proposed.
[The Figure in the Dream is Sickness]
The one that I saw in my dream, as above related, is not the Sun, as my half-breeds told me. The Sun is dressed like a gentleman, [in] a short coat, waistcoat, short breeches, stockings, boots, a hat and a beautiful feather stuck in it. He speaks English and the rest as mentioned above.
But the one I mentioned above, is Sickness, or the Plague. There are four of them: two walking in the air as I mentioned, and two in the earth—in the bowels of the earth at a certain moderate distance from the surface, perhaps in the same proportion as those who are above.
[Sickness Gives Warning of Diseases]
The Indian thus relates of him:
When I was a young man, he appeared to me and told me his name was Sickness, and that every time a general sickness was to take place amongst us, he would come and forewarn me.