Mr. Anderson remarks in his biography of Catharine Brown, that "the Cherokees are said to possess a language, which is more precise and powerful than any into which learning has poured richness of thought, or genius breathed the enchantments of fancy and eloquence."
David Brown, in one of his letters, in the same volume, terms his people the Tsallakee, of which we must therefore take "Cherokee," to be a corruption. It is seen by the Cherokee alphabet, that the sound of r does not occur in that language.
FAITH.
When Chusco was converted to Christianity at the mission of Michilimackinac, he had planted a field of potatoes on one of the neighbouring islands in lake Huron. In the fall he went over in his canoe, with his aged wife, to dig them—a labour which the old woman set unceremoniously about, as soon as they got into the field. "Stop!" cried the little old man, who had a small tenor voice and was bent nearly double by age,—"dare you begin to dig, till we have thanked the Lord for their growth." They then both knelt down in the field, while he lifted up his voice, in his native language, in thanks.
SHINGABA-WOSSINS, OR IMAGE STONES.
The native tribes who occupy the borders of the great lakes, are very ingenious in converting to the uses of superstition, such masses of loose rock, or boulder stones, as have been fretted by the action of water into shapes resembling the trunks of human bodies, or other organic forms.
There appears, at all times, to have been a ready disposition to turn such masses of rude natural sculpture, so to call them, to an idolatrous use; as well as a most ingenious tact, in aiding the effect of the natural resemblance, by dots or dabs of paint, to denote eyes, and other features, or by rings of red ochre, around their circumference, by way of ornament.
In the following figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, some of these masses are represented.