Notwithstanding this superstitious method of proceeding, it is very certain that they have acquired a knowledge of many plants and herbs that are of a medicinal quality, and which they know how to use with great skill.
From the time the resolution of engaging in a war is taken, to the departure of the warriors, the nights are spent in festivity, and their days in making the needful preparations.
If it is thought necessary by the nation going to war, to solicit the alliance of any neighbouring tribe, they fix upon one of their chiefs who speaks the language of that people well, and who is a good orator, and send to them by him a belt of wampum, on which is specified the purport of the embassy in figures that every nation is well acquainted with. At the same time he carries with him a hatchet painted red.
As soon as he reaches the camp or village to which he is destined, he acquaints the chief of the tribe with the general tenor of his commission, who immediately assembles a council, to which the ambassador is invited. There having laid the hatchet on the ground he holds the belt in his hand, and enters more minutely into the occasion of his embassy. In his speech he invites them to take up the hatchet, and as soon as he has finished speaking delivers the belt.
If his hearers are inclined to become auxiliaries to his nation, a chief steps forward and takes up the hatchet, and they immediately espouse with spirit the cause they have thus engaged to support. But if on this application neither the belt or hatchet are accepted, the emissary concludes that the people whose assistance he solicits have already entered into an alliance with the foes of his nation, and returns with speed to inform his countrymen of his ill success.
The manner in which the Indians declare war against each other, is by sending a slave with a hatchet, the handle of which is painted red, to the nation which they intend to break with; and the messenger, notwithstanding the danger to which he is exposed from the sudden fury of those whom he thus sets at defiance, executes his commission with great fidelity.
Sometimes this token of defiance has such an instantaneous effect on those to whom it is presented, that in the first transports of their fury a small party will issue forth, without waiting for the permission of the elder chiefs, and slaying the first of the offending nation they meet, cut open the body and stick a hatchet of the same kind as that they have just received, into the heart of their slaughtered foe. Among the more remote tribes this is done with an arrow or spear, the end of which is painted red. And the more to exasperate, they dismember the body, to show that they esteem them not as men but as old women.
The Indians seldom take the field in large bodies, as such numbers would require a greater degree of industry to provide for their subsistence, during their tedious marches through dreary forests, or long voyages over lakes and rivers, than they would care to bestow.
Their armies are never encumbered with baggage or military stores. Each warrior, besides his weapons, carries with him only a mat, and whilst at a distance from the frontiers of the enemy supports himself with the game he kills or the fish he catches.
When they pass through a country where they have no apprehensions of meeting with an enemy, they use very little precaution: sometimes there are scarcely a dozen warriors left together, the rest being dispersed in pursuit of their game; but though they should have roved to a very considerable distance from the war-path, they are sure to arrive at the place of rendezvous by the hour appointed.