Turning the view westward, from this point, up the St. Lawrence river, into the great lake basins, and west of them, to the Mississippi valley, the Algonquin class of tribes were found, on the discovery, to have overspread that region. Keeping the left shores of the St. Lawrence, and avoiding Hochelaga and its southern environs, possessed by the Iroquois, they ascended the Outawas branch to lakes Nepising and Huron. From the latter they migrated, through the straits of St. Mary's, to Lake Superior;

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It must, however, be conceded, that manners and customs form but a vague and unsatisfactory mode of investigating the origin of nations. Their traditions are variant and incongruous. The light they cast into the past reaches but a short distance, and is soon lost in the darkness which envelopes their origin. One generation has forgotten the traditions of another. New events give a brief place, in the Indian mind, to the old and cherished. Changes of position — the succession of their celebrated actors — and the rapid mutations of their whole history, make but a short-lived impression on the memory of hunters and warriors. Those incidents that could not be written, or subjected to any sort of notation, are soon completely forgotten. The customs of the same stocks vary much with changes of location, climate, and productions. The descendants of the Shoshonees, who live miserably on larvae and roots, on the eminences of the Rocky Mountains, under the name of Comanches, ride horses in Texas, and every few degrees of latitude brings a change of food. The ingenious mode of basket-making, in California (vide Plate VII.), would have been adopted, in all likelihood, by other tribes, under similar circumstances. The Atlantic and littoral tribes lived mostly on fish and mollusks, and have left piles of the ostrea along the borders of the sea, which serve as monuments of the former places of their residence. I have seen these piles in the cotton-fields of the Carolinas, which, to the traveller, remain the only vestiges of a people who have passed away. In the prairies of the West, the buffalo is the chief reliance for food. In Oregon the tribes always relied, in a measure, on the yam: in California they gather the seeds of spontaneously growing plants, with an amount of care and labor that would be sufficient to cultivate fields.

The dress of the tribes is still more changeable and more dependent on climate. The skins of the beaver and fine-furred animals were extensively used in the north at the period of the first planting of the colonies; and it so happened that an Indian was often thus clothed, at an expense which would have covered him with the finest and richest broadcloths. Deer-skins furnished the clothing in deer-yielding districts; and the dressed skins of the buffalo did the same throughout the latitudes west of the Mississippi, reaching from about 32° to 52°. Even language changed with more rapidity than writers are aware of, though it still furnishes the best clue to their history.

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Could it be anticipated that the Indian traditions could have preserved much value under these severe mutations? In effect, the tribes speak but of the beginning of the world, and of its present state. All else has dropped out of the Indian memory, unless it be some shadowy and discordant notions of a universal flood or deluge. Life to the Indian, while in the forest state, has little worth living for; and, indeed, death as little to die for. He is to lie down, as we see in the manners of the Otoes, the Pawnees, and the Niuna, with the horse and bear, and flatters himself with the hope of rising with them. The Peruvians, who, with consummate art, had built a temple to the Sun, buried the dog with their chiefs (vide Appendix II.), in their tombs of masonry. And the Algonquin puts a paddle or an apecun, or carrying-strap, in the grasp of the wife who had reared his family of children, that she may continue her life of drudgery in another world, and thus realize that death itself is inadequate to free her from the bonds of social slavery.

The forest districts of North America appear to have been more favorable to the development of the benign and social affections. It is in these districts, too, that we have witnessed the highest instances of the martial spirit, the preservation of some private rights in government, and a tone of free and bold eloquence. The Iroquois have taken the front rank in this class; but, from the testimony of history, which is affirmed by recent cranial examinations, conducted on scientific principles (Vol. II., p. 335), the Algonquin and the Appalachian groups are not a whit behind them in the indicia of intellectual capacity. But even here the triumph of human greatness is founded on the idea of stoicism. The future is a scene of phantoms, types, and shadows, in which the labors of this life will be re-enacted, but which promised no rest to the body or the soul. The Indian heaven is built on the opinions of hunters, who will resume the chase there under far happier auspices; and he will be relieved from the cruel ills and pinching wants which have attended him in this life. In passing through this elysium, as we learn from his traditions (vide Oneצta, p. 5), he evinces the imperturbability and obduracy of heart which he had manifested in the present scene. Whole canoe-loads of the disembodied spirits are seen, in this tradition, to sink in the lake which separates them from the HAPPY ISLAND, without producing any emotion. Still, death to the Indian is rather an event of gladness than terror. He passes away to his mortal account as if it were to be a place of rewards, and not of accountabilities or punishments. The indifference manifested by the aboriginal race on their exit from life, has been the topic of frequent remark, from the earliest period. The Indian lies down to die, as if to an assured rest or enjoyment, after a period of toil. His mind has been filled, from early youth, with fictions of a future elysium, in which the Great Spirit is ever described as the peculiar friend of the Red Race.

In the examination which has been made of Indian manners, customs, and character, in the first volume of this work (vide MENTAL TYPE OP THE INDIAN RACE, pages 30 to 43), a summary of traits is presented which appears to connect his origin with the oriental world. Time has not appeared to alter that view. We are of necessity

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Of the Indian manners and customs at large, we have had but little from that quarter since the days of Louis XIV., when the Christian church of both France and Europe, first essayed to bring the tribes under the power of civilization and Christianity. Charlevoix, in a review, in 1721, of the theories which prevailed among philosophers of Europe, from Montanus, Oviedo, and Grotius, to De Hornn, and down to his day, thinks they have dealt so largely in the marvellous, and in fanciful theories, as to have left the subject just where they found it. He points out errors and directs attention to the study of the languages. (Journal, p. 49.) On this side of the water we have had little which has fallen in our way, but the reminiscences of Adair, in 1774, and a revival of the theory ascribing a Hebrew origin to the tribes. It is a work deficient in historical research, general or tribal, but with some erudition. The essay of President Smith, of Princeton College, proceeds too exclusively in supporting a theory; and that of Boudinot (Star in the West), does not, I think, make so strong a case as the facts admitted, from the want of sound materials, while he over-estimates others. Dr. Jarvis questioned this theory in a public discourse, before the New York Historical Society, in 1820, which was deemed a paper of sound induction. The argument founded on philology cannot be properly handled, till we have a larger and more elaborate amount of materials, both from Asia and America, recorded on uniform principles of notation. Some evidences for a comparison of the Indian with the Hebrew language, have been collected. They denote strong elements of analogy, sometimes in sounds, but oftener in principles, with the Shemitic stock. Some of these, and particularly the pronominal phenomena, and the restricted verb for existence, have been incidentally adverted to in prior pages (Vol. II.. p. 353, Vol. IV., p. 386), but the topic is one demanding time, reading, and elaboration, which ill accords with the necessities and curt compliances which are often required to a large extent in public and official works.

It has likewise, thus far, been impossible, in this volume, to bring forward, in a digested form, the comparison of manners, customs, rites, and opinions, social and religious, which appear to refer the origin of the Indian tribes to an ancient and general epoch of political mutations over a wide surface of the Asiatic continent, affecting the Mongol, Chinese, and their affiliated nations. (Vide Appendix, No. 2.)

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TITLE III, LET. A., VOL. I.

General Archaeology. Antique Skill in Fortification. Erection of Tumuli. Vestiges of Labor in the Mississippi Valley. Antique Horticultural Beds. State of Arts and Miscellaneous Fabrics. Attempts at Mining and Metallurgy. Ante-Columbian Antiquities. Question of Antique Inscriptions. Dighton Rock — an Example of the Indian Kekeewin.

TITLE III., LET. B., VOL. II.

Evidences of Indian Antiquities, continued. Truncated Mounds, or Platform Residences, of the Florida Indians. Antique Enclosures and small Mounds on Cunningham's Island, Lake Erie. Inscription Rock. Description of Archaelogical Articles from South Carolina and New York. Embankment and Excavations on an Island at the Source of the Wisconsin and Ontonagon Rivers.

TITLE III., LET. C., VOL. III.

Record of Newly-Discovered Antiquities, continued. Pictographic Inscription from the banks of the Hudson. Antique Pottery from the Mounds of Florida and Georgia. Antique Colored Pottery from the banks of the River Gila, New Mexico. Explanation of the Inscription in the Character of the Kekeewin, from Lake Erie. Ancient Metallic Plates exhibited at the Muscogee Busks.

TITLE III., LET. D., VOL. IV.

(a.) A sketch of the Antiquities of the United States. The true Type of Ancient Semi-Civilization and Aboriginal Art, denoted by Antiquities. Indian Art, Architecture, Fortification, and Agriculture, at the close of the Fifteenth Century. Intrusive Elements of Art. Considerations of the various proofs of Art in the Mississippi Valley. Their Object, Character, and Age. Testimony of General G. R. Clark, and other Western Pioneers and Observers. Summary of Facts. Metallurgy. Pottery. Sculpture. Ancient Cloth from the Mounds. Antique Copper-mining on Lake Superior. Pictographic Inscriptions from the Alleghany River. Fort Hill of Elmira. (b.) An Essay on the Congaree Indians of South Carolina. (c.) New elementary Facts in the current discovery of American Archaeology.

TITLE III., LET. E., VOL. V.

Some Considerations on the Mound-Period of the Mississippi Valley, and on the general State of Indian Art prior to the Discovery, in the present Area of the United States. Traits and Comparisons of American Antiquities.

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III. Antiquities.

WE proceed, by a natural step, from what the Indians are, at the present time, to what they were, at the era of the colonization of the country. There is a voice taught by the antiquarian vestiges of former periods which cannot be mistaken. It is not designed to consider the question of the earliest discovery of the tribes by Europeans, but merely the state of their arts and industrial powers at the epoch; for, whether the continent was first visited by the Scandinavians, the ancient Erse, or the Celts of Britain or of Continental Europe, it is not pretended that the race of Red men are the descendants of such visitors. These early visits may have produced a class of INTRUSIVE ANTIQUITIES, such as is contended for by the Scandinavians (vide Ant. Amer.). Traces of this kind of vestiges, of peculiar type, are shadowed forth by an inscription, in antique characters, found on an elliptical stone in a tumulus in Virginia, opened in 1838 (vide Vol. I., p. 114, Vol. IV., p. 120), and also in the characters and figures of the Manlius Stone (Plate 8, Vol. V.), which probably tells the tale of the fate of some early victim of Spanish cupidity, during what we may call the mediaeval age of American antiquities. There may also be forms of art, disinterred from American soil, introduced from Asia, or by early adventurers from the Mediterranean, which have tended to direct the Indian mind to incipient steps of art or civilization. But these vestiges only serve to perplex, without unravelling the subject. For, whoever the intrusive visitors or colonists were, they did not permanently sustain themselves.

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When the old tribes west of the Mississippi are asked the direction they came from, they point south. They came up over the fertile, level plains, and hilly uplands east of the forbidding and impassable peaks of the Rocky mountains. Such is the account of the Quppas (Kapahas of De Soto's day, vide my "Ozarks"), Cadrons, Kansas, and the generality of the great prairie or Dacota group west of the Mississippi, and of the Iowas, Sioux, and Winnebagoes, who had crossed the stream at and below St. Anthony's Falls, and above the junction of the Missouri. (Vide Iowa map, Vol. III., Plate 30.)

The Sioux proper, who are the type, and were the precursors or pioneers of this group of tribes, ultimately reached the head waters of Lake Superior (vide D'Ablon and Marquette), and the sources of the Mississippi river, at Leech and Cass lakes. (Summary Narrative of Ex. Exp. to Sources of the Mississippi, p. 252.) From this position they had begun to recede, about the period of the discovery of Canada by the French, under the severe attacks of the Chippewas of Chegoimegon, of Lake Superior, under Bainswa and Noka, two prominent chiefs, and by the military band of the Mukundwa of Leech lake. In 1825, the Sioux had retraced their steps south nearly five hundred miles, having entirely abandoned the upper coasts of Lake Superior, and retained lands but a day's march (an Indian term of measure), on the St. Croix and Rum rivers. (Vide Treaty of Prairie du Chien, 19th Aug. 1825. U. S. Laws.) Their southern boundary was fixed at the river Watab; and, but for this guaranty of position by the United States, the Sioux tribes would, ere this, have been driven, by the fierce

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In leaving the sources of the Mississippi, the Sioux tribes abandoned to their fate the Assinabwoines of Red river, of Lake Winnipek, a Sioux tribe with a Chippewa name, who had, in fact, revolted from their rule — and this tribe, who speak the Dacota language, have made their political alliances with the Chippewa and other Algonquin tribes of that quarter.

Of the ancient Indian tribes of Florida, who existed there before the coining of the whole Appalachian group, we have no traditions. If we are to believe Bristock, who wrote one hundred and forty-five years after the conquest of Mexico, these Floridians, or "Apalachites," had a system of sun-worship, with a class of priesthood, and rulers, and jurisdictions, which appear to be almost wholly imaginative. (Davies' Hist. Carribees.) That some of the descendants of these primordial Floridians still exist, as elements, in the great Muscogulgee confederacy, as the Utchees, etc., is past doubt; but their nationality has departed with the fall of the primitive falcon flag, under which they fought.

By the term Vesperic tribes, we mean the entire aboriginal stocks of the United States, comprehending Appalachians, Cherokees, the Powhatans of Mr. Jefferson, the Algonquins, quite to and throughout New England, the tribes of the upper lakes, and the sources of the Mississippi, the Iroquois, or Six Nations, the Monacans of Virginia, the Wyandots of the west, and the Dacota group of tribes of the western shores of the Mississippi and Missouri. The point of migration of all these tribes was, generally, from the west; before crossing, it had been, generally, prior to crossing the Mississippi, from the south. It is the geographical area occupied by these tribes, after they came to the east of this river, that constitutes the principal theatre of American antiquities. It was also the location of some antiquities of the prior tribes, of a more antique and rustic class. (Bartram, 182, 370, 403.) These vestiges, of both epochs, denote a state of art, which is in no respect, superior to that of the semi-civilized stock of the south; but the grade of it is, generally, quite inferior to it, if we except the vestiges of labors in mining, of which the evidences have been recently discovered, and the features of intrusive archaeology existing. These latter are thought to be due to Celtic, Scandinavian, Iberian, or, at least, European sources; and can, by no means, be assimilated with any of the Indian remains, whether of ancient, the mediaeval or middle period, or existing state of aboriginal art. (Anti. Amer.)

The Lenni Lenapees tell us that they had been preceded by the Iroquois and the Talligewi, or Allegans. (Heckewelder.) The Muscogulges, or Creeks, landed above the Natchez, or Chigantualga of De Soto, who were then the great power. The Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, speak of tribes having two different languages; of which we hear of the dialects of the Natchez, Taכnsa, Savanuca, and other above mentioned. All the southern tribes of the secondary period of the Appalachian

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The tribes who had reached the Mississippi in their migrations, are traced on their back track by their peculiar kind of earth-works and vestiges, which are the chief monuments of their history. They did not come down to the forest and fertile prairie lands, on the west banks of this river, from the elevated, bleak, and barren deserts stretching at the east foot of the Rocky mountains. There are no indications that they crossed that broad and forbidding barrier, where travelling, in modern days, has required the utmost capacities of European and American skill, energy, and endurance. Frיmont takes no notice of antiquities of any kind. (Exp.) Lewis and Clarke found the Indians of the Missouri to possess the capacity of fortifying involutions and strong points on the Missouri river, extending to the tribes in their ethnologic dispersion northward, as high as the country of the Tetons — a Sioux people. For this species of fortification see Plate 14. It is remarkable, as embracing the principle of the Tlascallan gateway, of which the principal forms, existing in the earth-works of the Mississippi valley, are shown in Plate 4, Vol. 1. A prominent object in these forms, as in the instance before us, seems to have been, not so much absolutely to bar approach, as to put the enemy in doubt which way to go. A detailed description of this earth-work is given in Appendix No. 3. It is the most northerly locality of an earth-work, of this kind, which has been noticed on the Missouri, if we except, perhaps, the remains of a simple ditch across the prominent doubling of the river, at the old Mandan site.

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To determine the point, whether the Indian migration had crossed the Rocky mountains by the usual passes of the Columbia, attention has been devoted to the state of antiquities in Oregon, California, and Washington. The result has been decidedly unfavorable to the existence of antiquities in that quarter. Those tribes seem to have roved over the immense regions of the Pacific coast, with nearly as little evidence to mark their ancient residence, as the deer and bear they hunted. There is not a mound or earthwork analogous to those of the Mississippi valley, or indeed of any kind, in Oregon and Washington. The testimony of Mr. Ogden, for many years the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company in that quarter, is conclusive on this head. His employיes have often passed over those regions from Puget's Sound to the Bay of San Francisco. One of my correspondents in that quarter has been a zealous inquirer on this head, during a residence of four or five years on that coast; and has been unable, north or south, to find a mound, or any thing resembling it. I had been led to urge this inquiry with the more zeal, on account of some rumors on this head, relative to the valley of the Dachutes, but such vestiges on that stream have proved to be entirely apocryphal. The most recent researches have discovered some slight vestiges on the Yakama river, a stream rising in the Cascade mountains; but, on close inspection, they are found to enclose two old cellars, or perhaps traders' cachיs, and are evidently of little antiquity. The notes of Mr. Astor's factors, employed by Mr. Irving, in the preparation of "Astoria," do not appear to have contained any antiquarian notices. Captain Wilkes found no mounds or earth-works on the coast; nor is there the slightest notice of such works in the journey of Lt. Emmons, U. S. N., which is related in a prior part of these pages, Vol. III., p. 200. In the journey of Col. M'Kee, on Indian business, in California, from Benicia to the Klamath, bordering the Pacific coast, he notices nothing of the kind. (Vol. III., p. 99.) Small eminences resembling barrows are stated to exist near Puget's Sound; but it is doubtful whether these are of artificial construction.

If it be conceived that the Toltecs, Tezcucos, or Aztecs of Mexico passed this coast prior to their arrival at the Bay of California — a prime point in the archaeology of the semi-civilized tribes — it must have been before the tumuli, the pyramid, or the teocalli forms of art were developed. For, if people with their strong traits had made points of occupancy in the course of their exodus, as the Boturini picture-writings attest, there could not fail to be some vestiges of this kind. And this may serve to create the belief, that the Aztalan of their story was south of these latitudes. It may also serve to denote, that the Toltec race originally struck the coast probably as low

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The rise of nations from barbarism seems to require some individual to bring them to the culminating point. A Coxcox, Quetzalcoatl, a Bochica, or Capac, appear to have been necessary to light the flame of improvement in America. It has ever been thus in the history of the old world; and if even the labors of a SOQUOIAH (Cherokee Alph., Vol. II., p. 228), are deemed to have given an impulse to his tribe in our day, it must be remembered, that of him, as of his celebrated predecessors in the semi-civilized tribes, it may be affirmed, that European blood flowed in his veins. To disentangle the thread of Mexican history was not, perhaps, practicable, had it been attempted at the period of the conquest; and when the study was commenced, writers seem to have been carried away by looking for perfections in art, or attainments in government and policy, which never existed. What was rude in art, was described as polished — the grotesque was deemed artistic, and the irregular elaborate. Yet, in art, they were incomparably ahead of their morals. Their system of religion was so completely pervaded by the darkest spirit of daemonology, that the Bishop of Zurraga directed as many of their picture-writings, the only records they had, as he could collect, to be piled together and burned. The loss is not, perhaps, as great as might be expected. "It has been shown," says Mr. Gallatin, "that those which have been preserved contain but a meagre account of the Mexican history for one hundred years preceding the conquest, and hardly any thing that relates to prior events." (Eth. Trans., Vol. I., p. 145.) Both the true state of their arts and of their manners are left indeterminate. "There were strange inconsistencies in the principles and conduct of the Mexicans," observes a recent writer, "and strange blendings of softness and brutality — for the savage was, as yet, but rudely grafted on the citizen; and the wandering and predatory habits of a tribe were scarcely tamed by the needful restraints of municipal law." (B. Mayer's Mexico, p. 99.)

"It is to be regretted," says the same writer, "that we are not more fully informed of the condition of property among the masses of this singular empire. The conquerors did not trouble themselves with acquiring accurate statistical information, nor do they seem to have counted numbers carefully, except when they had enemies to conquer, or spoil to divide." (Ibid, p. 36.)

There was but one class of the Aztecs who had rights. They were the caciques. The lower orders had none. "The masses," observes the same writer, "who felt they had no constant abiding-place on earth, did not, in all probability, build for themselves those substantial and beautifully embellished homes, under whose influence modern civilization has so far exceeded the barren humanism of the valley of the Nile. It was useless, they deemed, to enshrine in marble, whilst living, the miserable spirit that, after death, might crawl in a crocodile or burrow in a log." (Ibid, p. 94.)

Cortez and Pizarro sought rather to make the heart of Charles V. wonder at what

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When Cortez ascended the great teocalli of Mexico, he found two altars to the Sun, on which a perpetual fire was kept burning. This had, alone, been the elder and original form of worship. The theory of sun-worship was still believed and kept up; but the practical working of the system had introduced human sacrifice. It was, at least, wholly corrupted by that sanguinary and brutal system. Sacrifices were offered to Heutzilapochtli, the god of war, who had supplanted the oriental rites, and Xolotol, who had created all things from infinitesimal parts of matter. Before the rude and gigantic statues of these idols human hearts, warmly torn from the victim, were offered. It was here that the Spanish prisoners, taken in conflicts with Montezuma, paid the forfeit of their lives. And it was this horrid ritual which doubtless induced Zurragua to obliterate, as far as possible, every trace of the history of such gross barbarians.

It may be affirmed, that it was these sanguinary rites — this departure from the more simple and symbolic rites of the worship of the sun, unmixed with bloody sacrifices, that, if it did not raise dissensions among the Indian priesthood, made the outer tribes the more willing to scatter themselves abroad. But, from what we know of the Indian character, there is every reason to believe that the non-sanguinary sun-worshipping tribes were conquered and rudely driven off. The dominant tribes had created new gods, and assumed the power to control them; while the people were commanded to worship them. Asia had done the same thing before.

When we turn the view from this picture of the Aztec society and its rites — from the power, political and ecclesiastical, which their priests had acquired — from the utter nothingness, in point of rights and happiness, to which the lower classes were reduced — when, indeed, we leave this prospect of a wild, daemoniacal Indian priesthood, striking for power, and sealing their acquisitions in blood, to survey the manly, council-governed, and independent hunter and warrior tribes of the north, it is not difficult to perceive the causes of the disturbances and separations of the tribes of the equinoctial latitudes. Nor is it difficult, in viewing their manners and customs, to recognise, as a substratum of their religious system, evidences of the former existence of the wide-spreading rites of the adoration of the Sun.

The devotion to the principles of this worship prevailed extensively over the North. It was not inaugurated in these northern districts with all the same ceremonious rites as among the Natchez, Chickasaws, and Choctaws, and the Cherokees on the banks of the lower

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There was another benign element of civilization in the central American tribes, of which history has lost the trace; though its vestiges present themselves to us in a very striking shape. But whether a portion of the Acolhuan or Tezcocan stock who reached Mexico, according to Clavigero, in 1170, had fled there, or these ruins are due to some foreign source, is unknown. We allude to the people who left the ruins of Palenque, which were first described by Col. Galindo, and have been elaborately illustrated by Waldeck, and more recently by Mr. Stephens. (Incidents Trav. in Cent. Am. and Yucatan.)

This element appears to us, indeed, to be of more ancient date than either that of Cuzco, or Cholulo. The projecting ornament in the ruins of Uxmal, which has been called the elephant's tooth (Stephens' Inc. of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I., p. 171), resembles the Chinese structures of the oldest dynasty, and is not far removed in style from the angles of the pagodas of the existing period. Nor is the compound cubical ornament of the fagade of Iten Itza, dissimilar to a very common ornamental geometrical figure in the buildings, arts, and manufactures of that people. In the ornamental sculptures above the main entrance of the principal edifice at this place (Plate 1, Vol. II., p. 168), we have, in the extravagant and heavy-feathered ornament above the fallen figure, an unmistakable evidence of the Toltec style. The mere fact that these ruins were overgrown by the forest, and forgotten in the traditions of Anahuac, at the period of the discovery, and not, indeed, found or revealed in any manner to the Spanish, till a very late period, is presumptive evidence of great comparative antiquity.

It is denoted by the investigations in Vol. IV., p. 438, Plate 39, that the ancient Peruvians possessed bronze instruments. Both the groups of the tribes of Peru and Mexico were without the ancient distaff; but they possessed the art of drawing out the thread, in a manner which is believed to be precisely analogous to that which now prevails among the Navahoes, and Moqui, and other indigenous tribes of New Mexico. Hand-weaving appears to have been performed in the same manner. (Vol. IV., p. 436, Plates 36, 37.) Their workers in metallurgy had the blow-pipe and the crucible. (Vol. IV., p. 448.) Not having the ox or horse, or having domesticated any animal capable of labor, they had no plow. Lands were cultivated by the use of wooden instruments hardened in the fire.

Allusion has been made to these elementary vestiges in the antique semi-civilized tribes of the south, but as a mere point of transition to the antiquities of the Mississippi valley. In most things, the character of the antique civilization of the southern

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In the rise of the Iroquois power, the Delawares lost their independence; and appear to have been placed under a ban. We have no date for these mutations. They were most kindly treated, in 1682, by William Penn. We hear of no Iroquois protests to their selling their lands, at that era. It is probable none had been made. The progress of the settlements, however, shows that, in a few years, such a power to control the Delawares was made. A very striking evidence of this occurred in a treaty at Lancaster, in 1744. The Iroquois, at this large assemblage of the tribes, denied the right of the Delawares to alienate lands. Canassatego, one of their chiefs, upbraided them, in public council, for some former act of that kind. Speaking in a strain of mixed irony and arrogance, he told them not to reply to his words, but to leave the council in silence. He ordered them, in a peremptory manner, to quit the section of country where they then resided, and to remove to the banks of the Susquehannah. (Vol. III., p. 197.) Whatever may have been the state of submission in which the Delawares felt themselves to be to the confederate power of the Iroquois, it does not appear that the right to control them had been publicly exercised, prior to this time. It was, however, with this proud nation, but a word and a blow. They accordingly quitted for ever the banks of their native Delaware, the scene of many memories, and the resting-place of the bones of their ancestors, and turned their faces towards the west.

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Twelve years afterwards, namely, in 1751, we find them living at Shamokin, and at Wyalusing, on the Susquehannah — positions in which they were threatened, on the one hand, by the intrusive tread of the white emigrant, and, on the other, by the momentary dread of the Iroquois tomahawk. It was the misfortune of the Delawares, that an impression prevailed in the English colonies, that they were under French influence. (Vide Loskiel.) This impression, whether well or ill founded, pervaded society, in southern New York, to such a degree, in 1744, that the Moravian mission at Shikomico, in Dutchess County, was broken up and transferred to Bethlehem, on the Susquehannah; where Count Zinzendorf, three years before, had established the seat of his operations. (Vide Appendix V.) The impression lost none of its force from an avowal, by the band at Wyalusing, of the principles of peace and non-resistance taught by the conscientious disciples of both Penn and Zinzendorf. This doctrine was embraced, with great zeal, by one of their speakers called Papanhank; who, in 1756, visited Philadelphia by a journey of 200 miles, where he addressed an assemblage of moral persons, and concluded by kneeling down and making an impressive prayer. (Benezet's Observations, p. 18.)

Men who devoted themselves, with simplicity of intention, to one object, did not probably make as much effort to disabuse the public mind on this head as would appear to have been desirable at the period. The country was engaged in an Indian war, which raged on the frontier, from Quebec to New Orleans. Braddock had been defeated the year before, most clearly owing to the want of a proper force of Indian scouts. France was making a most formidable effort to save her Indian empire; and England and America, as formidable a one, to destroy it. It is certain that this impression followed the Delawares in their removal across the Alleghanies, and during their settlement, under the auspices of their teachers, on the waters of the Muskingum. Nor did their position here tend to remove the impression, but rather to strengthen it. Gnadenhutten became to the Delawares in heart, as it Avas in name, the Tents of Peace. They addressed themselves to agriculture and grazing. They were devoted to their teachers. They refused to join all warlike parties who passed through their towns, on their forays of murder and plunder against the frontiers. It was not in their power to refuse these parties victuals, but they supplied them with no means of offence, and expressed their principles of peace, both as among the Indian tribes and the whites. But the impression grew stronger and stronger in the Ohio valley, that they were in communication with the enemy. The borders of the new States were literally drenched in blood by marauding parties of Indians, who butchered the pioneers in their cabins, and led their children away in captivity. And this impression against the Delawares finally led to the most tragic results.

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But it was not alone the frontiers-men who were excited. The Indian tribes, to whom they had observed the policy of neutrality, were alike displeased. Councils of peace to them were thrown away. They could neither understand nor tolerate such a course. They lived in war and plunder; and the result was, after repeated threats, that a Wyandot war-party suddenly appeared on the Muskingum, and ordered the Delawares to upper Sandusky. It was in vain that excuses were pleaded. The party were inexorable. They killed many of their cattle and hogs, and in 1781 removed the population of three towns, numbering between three and four hundred persons. After living at Sandusky a year, they were permitted to return to the banks of the Muskingum. When the alarmed settlers on the Monongahela heard of this return, they regarded the movement in a hostile light. The British not having yet surrendered their northern posts on the Miami of the Lakes, and at Detroit and Michilimackinac, and the Indians throughout that vast region continuing to manifest the deepest hostility, as shown by the fierce battles against Generals Harmer and St. Clair, the return of such a body of men, who had been, it seems, removed by the authority of the commanding officer at Detroit, (Benezet, 20) appeared in a threatening light. Such it was not, as is now known, for the Moravian converts among the Delawares had been instructed in, and sincerely adopted, the principles of peace and non-resistance. Of all doctrines, these were the least understood by the hardy frontiers-men, who, through a long and bloody experience, had been led to deem the Indian, when under the excitement of war, as a tiger in his thirst for blood, and alike destitute of mercy or sympathy. This may be said in apology for the inhuman and unjustifiable massacre in 1782 of the unresisting Moravian Delawares, who witnessed, in their submissive deaths, no little share of the spirit of St. Stephen. This massacre wrought up the feelings of resentment of the Wyandots and other hostile tribes of the west, who were under the influence of the basest white counsellors, to the highest pitch of fury. And hence, when at a later period of the same year Colonel Crawford and his command were defeated on the plains of Sandusky by the Wyandots and their allies, they assumed the guise of fiends in human shape, and in the presence of some of their renegade white counsellors, sacrificed that officer and his son-in-law at the stake.

The Delawares, along with the Wyandots, Shawanoes, Miamies, and other western tribes, who had been in arms on the frontiers, were parties to the general treaty of Greenville of 1795, and were admitted to the terms of peace. These relations were further strengthened by the treaty of Fort Wayne, in 1803, and of Vincennes in 1804; and from the earliest of these dates the frontiers were relieved of their war-parties, and rested in a general peace with all the tribes, till the primary movement made by Tecumseh, in 1811-12. The idea of Indian supremacy in America, so strongly inculcated on the tribes by Pontiac in 1763, when Great Britain was the impinging power,

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The Delawares have been regarded by some as an ancient tribe in the Ohio valley. (Gen. Harrison's Hist. Dis.) Their traditions denote, indeed, that they had, in former ages, crossed the Mississippi from the west; but their domiciliation there, as a tribe, was recent. Their first movement from the Delaware river towards the west appears to have been within fifty years of Penn's landing. We find by the manuscript journal of Conrad Wiser (Vol. IV., p. 605) that he reported the number of Delawares in the Ohio valley, in 1748, at one hundred and sixty-five warriors, which, agreeably to the usual rate of computation, would give 800 souls. By going back from this date, namely to the French tables of 1736 (Vol. III. p. 554), it is perceived that there were no Delawares in the west at that time. So that it is in a period of twelve years from 1736 to 1748, that they must have arrived from the east of the Alleghanies. Yet within sixteen years of this time, Colonel Bouquet estimates them as capable of bringing 500 warriors into the field (Vol. III, p. 558), a manifest exaggeration.

Once west of the Alleghanies the Delawares, at least the body of the tribe, do not appear to have adhered with much tenacity to the excellent teachings they had received on the banks of the Delaware and the Susquehannah. The labors of the plow, the loom, and the anvil, do not make much impression on a tribe after it has quit the precincts of civilization, and come under the exciting influence of war and hunting. After a few years they took shelter on the White Water river of Indiana; and from this position, finding themselves pressed by the intrusive feet of a rapidly gathering civilized population, ceded their lands, and went over the Mississippi. The author visited their cottages in the upper valley of Maramec, in 1818 (Scenes and Adventures in the Ozark Mountains); they are now situated on very eligible and fertile tracts on the waters of the Kanzas, in the new Territory of that name.

Delaware history has little to distinguish it, in the principles of action, from that of the other tribes. They sometimes agreed, in their negotiations, to perform what they could not accomplish; and were persuaded into measures which they could not well comprehend, and had, perhaps, no heart to execute. The west had been regarded in their traditions as the paradise of hunters; and when they were disturbed by the footsteps of white men, they fled in that direction. Evidences that the pressure they felt in the east would follow them a long time in the west, are found in the permission to settle in upper Louisiana, by Governor Carondalet, on the 4th of January, 1793. (Indian Treaties, p. 539.) In a treaty concluded at Fort Pitt in 1778, during the hottest of the Revolutionary war, they entered into terms of amity with the United States, granted power to march armies through their country and procure supplies, in return for which it is stipulated to build a fort for the protection of their women and children against the hostile tribes. This was the origin of Fort M'Intosh. This alliance

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It will be sufficient to state the commencement of our intercourse with this tribe. To continue the record of these negotiations, from era to era, would only exhibit dry details of facts, similar, in their general aspect, to the changes in residence, and mutations of time and place, which have attended the transference of most of the tribes from the Atlantic borders to the west of the Mississippi. There is much resemblance in the principles and general incidents of these removes. There is one generic truth which applies to all. They were perpetually at open war, or variance, with each other. They had not elevation of mind enough to appreciate each other's motives, principles, sentiments, or character. The suspicion they had of their chiefs, priests, and warriors, kept them in continual dread. They believed firmly in witchcraft and necromancy, which could be exercised on all, present or absent. Treacherous themselves, in point of fealty, they expected treachery from the neighboring tribes. Good motives were ascribed to bad actions, with a plausibility which would have done credit to a Talleyrand or a Metternich. Tarhe was burned at the stake under the accusation of witchcraft, but really to take him out of the way of Elksotawa and Tecumseh.

The tribes agreed also in this. Each remove was at the loss of something in civilization, which they had before attained. By throwing them into new regions of wilderness, it exposed them to new temptations in the line of hunting, and rivalry for distinction in the war-path. Thus, a considerable portion of the Delawares, when they had reached Missouri, and the Indian territory west of it, went into Texas, where they have the reputation of first-rate guides, hunters, woodsmen, and, if necessity call for it, warriors. All the tribes felt sensibly the effects of the failure of game on their lands, as they pursued their line of migration west; and would have suffered miserably, had it not been for the increased demand for, and value ascribed to, their refuse hunting-lands. Acres took the place of beaver-skins. But while this gave them, at least periodically, a plethora of means, it exposed them to the influence of indulgence. The Indian who had lost the industry of hunting, had no other kind of industry. It was noble to hunt, but mean to labor. And when he found that, in the shape of annuities, his lands could be briefly turned into money, he fell into the snare of luxury. The hunter and nomadic Indian has but little idea of the value of money, or silver coin; he appears to regard it as something to dispossess himself of, and often

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The period from 1814 to 1824, made it evident that the tribes, and remnants of tribes, could not remain in prosperity, in the growing American settlements of the States and Territories, without certain and speedy destruction. President Monroe took the initiative, in recommending their removal, with their own consent, to a territory to be set apart for them, west of the Mississippi. (Vol. III., p. 573.) Congress formally sanctioned this plan, in 1830. The number of Delawares west, in 1840, was 830. (Vol. III., p. 609.) The entire population of the tribe, in 1850, was returned at 1500. Their present population, west of that great line of demarcation, is estimated at 2500 souls. They possess 375,000 acres of fertile land at the mouth of the Kansas river, in the territory of Kansas, besides about thrice this amount of acres lying at higher points on the same river and its tributaries. A considerable portion of the population resident on these tracts, are cultivators of the soil — raise horses, cattle, and hogs — dress, in most respects, in civilized costume — and are under favorable influences. The long-foretold time of the counsels and visions of their ancient wise men, recorded in their cherished OLA WALUM, prefiguring a land of prosperity in the west, may, indeed, be deemed at hand, if they are true to themselves.

This term is derived from OJIBWA, the cognomen of the tribe for themselves. Its meaning has not been satisfactorily given. Mr. Nicollet, in his etymology (Appendix V), is believed to be mistaken. Although they live in a land of lakes, and are celebrated for the use and artistic structure of both the canoe and paddle — the chimaun and abwi — there is no instance of a tribe having named themselves in this manner, besides that the proposed compound is at variance with the principles of the grammar. The name of the tribe appears to be recent. It is not met with in the older writers. The French, who were the earliest to meet them, in their tribal seat at the falls, or Sault de Ste. Marie, named them Saulteur, from this circumstance. M'Kenzie uses the term JIBWA, as the equivalent of this term, in his voyages. They are referred to, with little difference in the orthography, in General Washington's report, in 1754, of his trip to Le Boeuf, on Lake Erie; but are first recognised, among our treaty-tribes, in the general treaty of Greenville, of 1794, in which, with the

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The dress of the women differs from that of the men. Their leggins are tied below the knee; and their coat or shift is wide, hanging down to the ancle, and is tucked up at pleasure by means of a belt, which is fastened round the waist. Those who have children have these garments made very full about the shoulders, as when they are travelling they carry their infants upon their backs, next their skin, in which situation they are perfectly comfortable, and in a position convenient to be suckled. Nor do they discontinue to give their milk to them till they have another child. Childbirth is not the object of that tender care and serious attention among the savages as it is among civilized people. (Vol. II. p. 65, Plate 26.) At this period no part of their usual occupation is omitted; and this continual and regular exercise must contribute to the welfare of the mother, both in the progress of parturition

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Though the women are as much in the power of the men as other articles of their property, they are always consulted, and possess a very considerable influence in the traffic with Europeans, and other important concerns.

Plurality of wives is common among them; and the ceremony of marriage is of a simple nature. The girls are betrothed at a very early period to those whom the parents think the best able to support them; nor is the inclination of the woman considered. Whenever a separation takes place, which sometimes happens, it depends entirely on the will and pleasure of the husband. In common with the other Indians of this country, they have a custom respecting the periodical state of a woman, which is rigorously observed: at that time she must seclude herself from society. (Plate 3.) They are not even allowed in that situation to keep the same path as the men when travelling: and it is considered a great breach of decency for a woman so circumstanced to touch any utensils of manly occupation. Such a circumstance is supposed to defile them, so that their subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or misfortune. There are particular skins which the women never touch, as of the bear and the wolf; and those animals the men are seldom known to kill.

They are not remarkable for their activity as hunters, which is owing to the ease with which they snare deer and spear fish; and these occupations are not beyond the strength of their old men, women, and boys, so that they participate in those laborious occupations which among their neighbors are confined to the women. They make war on the Esquimaux, who cannot resist their superior numbers, and put them to death, as it is a principle with them never to make prisoners. At the same time they tamely submit to their enemies, the Knisteneaux, a people who are not so numerous as themselves.

They do not affect that cold reserve at meeting, either among themselves or strangers, which is common with the Knisteneaux, but communicate mutually and at once all the information of which they are possessed. Nor are they roused like them from an apparent torpor to a state of great activity. They are consequently more uniform in this respect, though they are of a very persevering disposition when their interest is concerned.

As these people are not addicted to spirituous liquors, they have a regular and uninterrupted use of their understanding, which is always directed to the advancement of their own interest; and this disposition, as may be readily imagined, sometimes occasions them to be charged with fraudulent habits. They will submit with patience to the severest treatment, when they are conscious that they deserve it; but will never forget or forgive any wanton or unnecessary rigor. A moderate conduct I never

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There are conjurors and high priests, but I was not present at any of their ceremonies, though they certainly operate in an extraordinary manner on the imaginations of the people in the cure of disorders. Their principal maladies are rheumatic pains, the flux, and consumption. The venereal complaint is very common; but though its progress is slow, it gradually undermines the constitution, and brings on a premature decay. They have recourse to superstition for curing diseases, and charms are their only remedies, except the bark of the willow, which being burned and reduced to powder, is strewed upon green wounds and ulcers. They also use vapor baths, or places contrived for promoting perspiration. Of the use of simples and plants they have no knowledge; nor can it be expected, as their country does not produce them.

Though they have enjoyed so long an intercourse with Europeans, their country is so barren as not to be capable of producing the ordinary necessaries naturally introduced by such a communication; and they continue, in a great measure, their own inconvenient and awkward modes of taking their game, and of preparing it when taken. Sometimes they drive the deer into the small lakes, where they spear them, or force them into inclosures, where the bow and arrow are employed against them. These animals are also taken in snares made of skin. In the former instance, the game is divided among those who have been engaged in the pursuit of it. In the latter, it is considered as private property; nevertheless, any unsuccessful hunter passing by, may take a deer so caught, leaving the head, skin, and saddle, for the owner. Thus, though they have no regular government, as every man is lord in his own family, they are influenced more or less by certain principles which conduce to their general benefit.

In their quarrels with each other, they very rarely proceed to a greater degree of violence than is occasioned by blows, wrestling, and pulling of the hair; while their abusive language consists in applying the name of the most offensive animal to the object of their displeasure, and adding the terms ugly, and chiay, or still-born.

Their arms and domestic apparatus, in addition to the articles procured from Europeans, are spears, bows and arrows. Their fishing-nets and lines are made of green deer-skin thongs. They have also nets for taking the beaver as he endeavors to escape from his lodge, when it is broken open. It is set in a particular manner for the purpose, and a man is employed to watch the moment when he enters the snare, or he would soon cut his way through it. He is then thrown upon the ice, where he remains as if he had no life in him.

The snow-shoes are of a very superior workmanship. The inner part of their frame is straight, the outer one is curved, and it is pointed at both ends, with that in

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The country which these people claim as their land, has a very small quantity of earth, and produces little or no wood or herbage. Its chief vegetable substance is the moss, on which the deer feed; and a kind of rock-moss, which, in times of scarcity, is a resource against starvation. When boiled in water, it dissolves into a clammy, glutinous substance, that affords a very sufficient nourishment. But notwithstanding the barren state of their country, with proper care and economy, these people might live in great comfort, for the lakes abound with fish, and the hills are covered with deer. Though, of all the Indian people of this continent, they are considered as the most provident, they suffer severely at certain seasons, and particularly in the dead of winter, when they are under the necessity of retiring to their scanty, stinted woods. To the westward of them the musk-ox may be found, but they have no dependence on it as an article of sustenance. There are also large hares, a few white wolves, peculiar to these regions, and several kinds of foxes, with white and grey partridges, etc. The beaver and moose-deer they do not find till they come within 60° north latitude; and the buffalo is still farther south. That animal is known to frequent a higher latitude to the westward of their country. These people bring pieces of beautiful variegated serpentine or steatite, which are found on the surface of the earth. It is easily worked, bears a fine polish, and hardens with time; it endures heat, and is manufactured into pipes or calumets, as they are very fond of smoking tobacco, a luxury which the Europeans communicated to them.

Their amusements or recreations are but few. Their music is so inharmonious, and their dancing so awkward, that they might be supposed to be ashamed of both, as they very seldom practise either. They also shoot at marks, and play at the games common among them, but in fact they prefer sleeping to either; and the greater part of their time is passed in procuring food, and resting from the toil necessary to obtain it.

They are also of a querulous disposition, and are continually making complaints, which they express by a constant repetition of the word eduiy, "it is hard," in a whining and plaintive tone of voice.

They are superstitious in the extreme, and almost every action of their lives, however trivial, is more or less influenced by some whimsical notion. I never observed that they had any particular form of religious worship; but as they believe in a good and evil spirit, and a peculiar state of future rewards and punishments, they cannot be devoid of religious impressions. At the same time, they manifest a decided unwillingness to make any communications on the subject. On this subject all Indians are taciturn.

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The Athapascas have been accused of abandoning their aged and infirm people to perish, and of not burying their dead; but these are melancholy necessities, which proceed from their wandering way of life. They are by no means universal, for it is within my knowledge that a man, rendered helpless by the palsy, was carried about for many years, with the greatest tenderness and attention, till he died a natural death. That they should not bury their dead in their own country, cannot be imputed to them as a custom arising from a savage insensibility, as they inhabit such high latitudes that the ground never thaws; but it is well known that when they are in the woods, they cover their dead with trees. Besides, they manifest no common respect to the memory of their departed friends, by a long period of mourning, cutting off their hair, and never making use of the property of the deceased. Nay, they frequently destroy or sacrifice their own, as a token of regret and sorrow.

If there be any people who, from the barren state of their country, might be supposed to be cannibals by nature, these people, from the difficulty they at times experience in procuring food, might be liable to that imputation. But, in all my knowledge of them, I never was acquainted with one instance of that disposition; nor among all the natives which I met with in a route of five thousand miles, did I see or hear of an example of cannibalism, but such as arose from that irresistible necessity which has been known to impel even the most civilized people to eat each other."

Of the Strongbows, Copper-Mine Indians, and other tribes of the widely-spread Athapasca family, we are less fully informed; and distinct from their language, the interest they have excited is less perfectly developed. Nor have they, so far as our knowledge of their ethnographical movements extends, exerted much influence on the tribes of the southerly latitudes of the continent.

The Saskatchawine river of Lake Winnipeck originates in the Rocky Mountains, in north latitude about 50° and 54°. Between its great southern and northern forks, in a fertile, game country, are found the Pecaneaux, Blackfeet, and Blood Indians. These tribes constitute a group which is different from their neighbors, speaking a language on the lower parts of the river, agreeing with that of the Assinaboines, who are Dacotas, or the Kenistenos, who are Algonquins. Traders and interpreters of the region pronounce it peculiar. Mackenzie informs us, that their track of migration has been towards the north-west, expressing the opinion that they have a "language of their own." From a vocabulary of it exhibited to the late Mr. Gallatin, he was inclined to deem it referable to the Algonquin family, and has so classified it in his

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In whatever these tribes differ, however, from their neighbors, and the rest of the Indian stocks, they agree with them in their hostilities to each other, and in their continuous broils and disputes. These perpetually recurring disturbances finally led to a general feud, in which they separated into two parties — the one distinguished by the Red, or bloody flag, and the other, from reverence to a noted leader, who had fallen, the Black flag. The young and more warlike warriors, generally ranged themselves under the Red banner; the more elderly and sedate, under the Black ensign. After numerous skirmishes, and endeavors to entrap each other, a great battle was finally fought, in which the party of the Red flag triumphed. This led to a final separation. The party of the Black flag fled towards the south. Continuing on in this direction, they reached the banks of the Missouri. This flight appears to have taken place in the autumn, after the prairies had been burned over, and the black ashes of the grass and shrubbery colored their moccasins and leggins. In this plight, they were first met by the Upsaroka, or Crow Indians, who called them Blackfeet. The term was adopted by the Gros Ventres and Mandans, and soon spread among all the tribes. They had extended their hunting and war parties to the head waters of the river Meriאs, and never proceeded farther east than Milk River, — a stream falling into the Missouri on the west, about one hundred and fifty miles above the Yellow Stone.

By this flight, they had now found a new country, abounding in every requisite of Indian life. But they had not left behind that spirit of internal dissension and discord which had produced the split on the Saskatchiwine. A new feud arose among the Missouri Blackfeet, which resulted in another division of the tribe, under an ambitious leader, called Piכgan, or the Pheasant. After several defeats, he was driven across the Missouri, and took shelter in the mountains. The three recognized divisions of the tribe, are, therefore, in the order of their organization — the Bloods, the Blackfeet, and the Piכgans. (Vide Appendix, No. 5.) The whole number of these divisions has been estimated at nine thousand six hundred, occupying twelve hundred lodges. (Vol. III., p. 629.) They were greatly over-estimated in former accounts, received from persons residing in the Indian country, who, without the slightest intention to deceive, have not had the means of accurate computation. They suffered much from the ravages of small-pox, which swept through the Missouri valley, in 1837.

The character and reputation of the Blackfeet nation, has been, perhaps, underrated, from occurrences which transpired in 1805, during the celebrated expedition of Lewis and Clark. They are described by later observers, as having more decision and fixity in their camp regulations, or laws and customs, than other tribes on the Missouri,

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Yet there are always some abatements to the severity of the manners and customs of even the most barbarous tribes. A person of good judgment and observation, who has spent the better part of his life in commercial dealings with these, and the neighboring tribes of the Sioux, Upsarokas, Mandans, etc., makes replies which furnish the grounds of the following observations.

The character of the Indians is composed of two things — ferocity and goodness. That these Indians are of a cruel, treacherous, and inexorable disposition, that, to take vengeance on an enemy, they often pass many days, forgetting the calls of nature, crossing forests and prairies without paths, subsisting on what the woods and plains furnish; that they will listen without pity to the piercing cries of the unhappy victims that fall in their hands, and receive a diabolical pleasure from the tortures they inflict on their prisoners, is only too true.

Accustomed from their infancy to bear pain, they soon become superior to the dangers of fear: forest precepts and practices never cease to precede or follow one another; however they may fail in their enterprises, they at once flatter themselves with the hope of better success in the future. They are as sly as a fox, possess the agility of a deer, the eyes of a lynx, and the unconquerable ferocity of the tiger.

They are generally well proportioned, tall, and straight, and there is seldom a deformed person among them. Their skin is of a reddish or copper color, their eyes large and

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Those men that wish to appear more expert than others, pull out the hair of their head, except a bunch that they leave on the top of the scalp. They paint themselves fantastically with red, yellow, or black paint, men as well as women.

Their shoes or moccasins are made with the skin of deer, elk, or buffalo, well dressed; they are garnished with beads, or dyed porcupine-quills. The Indians in general pay more attention to their ornaments, than to the dress itself, or the accommodation of their wigwam.

The tools which they use in fabricating their utensils are so defective, that they very seldom work anything but what they are absolutely in want of, as wooden bowls, spoons, stone-pipes, pipe-stems, bows and arrows, and war-clubs. Their principal implements are knives, heated awls for boring holes, fire-steels, and small hatchets, which they obtain from the whites. Knives and fire-steels are two very essential articles in war. The European costume sits badly on the Indian; in general, they make a better appearance in their native dresses than anything they can procure from the whites. In their own costume, they are more free in their movements; when they have foreign clothing on, they have the appearance of being confined.

When the female seats herself, she places her limbs decently, both knees together, and turns her feet side-ways; but that posture helps to make them walk badly, so that they seem to be lame. They have no midwives among them, nor do they suffer much in parturition; they often absent themselves from their daily work but a couple of hours. The men take little notice of domestic affairs; indolent from pride and custom, they leave the women not only to do all the internal work, but often send them after the meat of the game they have killed, although sometimes at a great distance.

The women place their children, as soon as born, on a piece of hooped board, stuffed with grass; the child is laid on its back, on one of this kind of cradles, and enveloped with pieces of skin or cloth to keep him warm. This forest-cradle is tied with pieces of leather bands; to these they tie other straps, to suspend from their heads, or hang them to the limbs of trees, while the mother does the necessary work of the lodge.

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The Indian women are remarkably decent at the time of their periodical illness. They make a little lodge close to the large ones, where they retire. At that period, the men debar all intercourse with them; not even fire is brought from the lunar retreats of these women. They are very superstitious in this matter; if one of their pipe-stems splits, they believe that the pipe has been lit at one of these menstrual fires, or that the smoker has been speaking to one of these secluded women.

If an Indian of these bands has been absent from his family many months, on a war or hunting excursion, when the wife and children go to meet him at a little distance from camp, instead of the natural affections that would rise in the heart of a civilized people, and mutual pleasure of meeting, the warriors continue to walk on their course without paying the least attention to these feminine visitants. When the warrior gets to his lodge, he sits down, and smokes with the same imperturbability and apparent insensibility, as if he had been absent only a day or an hour.

If the Indian is insensible in his feelings or manners towards the female, it is an insensibility which he applies to himself. He goes several days without food, and is too proud or stolid to murmur. If you tell him that one of his sons has killed many enemies, and has brought many scalps, and taken many prisoners or slaves, his eyes glisten, but he expresses no rapture. Instead of this, if you tell him that one of his sons has been killed or taken prisoner, he receives the intelligence in silence; not a look or a word shows the feelings of his heart. Notwithstanding examples of apparent indifference, I have never seen, says my informant, among other people, more real examples of paternal affection, than among these mute foresters; and the men, in general, are not without conjugal affection. Their children are loved; and, according to their manners, loving to their parents. (Mitcell.)

There are some particular rules as to visits from wigwam to wigwam. If an Indian goes visiting to a particular lodge, he names the person that he comes to see, and the rest of the family immediately depart. The same method is practised in regard to the other sex, but then he must pay particular attention not to speak of love as long as the sun is above the horizon.

The Blackfeet have words in their language to express the general lapse of time; they do not count the hours, but the days. They count time by winters, or as they express themselves, by snows. They count their years by moons, making them consist of twelve moons; but after observing twelve moons, they add one more, which they call the lost moon.

Every month, with them, is an expressive name of the season. They call March the green moon; April, the moon of plants; May, the moon of flowers; June, the hot moon; July, the moon of the deer; August, sturgeon-moon, for in that month they catch that fish; September, the fruit-moon; October, the travelling-moon, for at that season they leave their dwellings, and go to their hunting-grounds for the winter season; November, the beaver-moon, for at that season these animals commence to go

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These traits, derived from the social life of the Indians, mitigate our ideas of a people who have been pronounced savage, cruel, perfidious, voracious, and addicted to thieving, murder, and plunder; without forecast or precaution, idle and improvident. If they show some glimmerings of knowledge that could be improved by culture, and some manliness of character that could be directed to better energies, they also exhibit a class of suite features in the Indian race, that, modified as it may be, are essentially the same that it was found in the valley of the Ohio, throughout the basins of the great lakes, and along the wide-spreading borders of the Atlantic.

This term is derived from a verb in the Chippewa language, which does not imply stealing, but taking openly, by an exertion of self-constituted authority, and as such, the tribe rejoices in it. They went out, originally, from the ancient capital of the Chippewas at Chegoimegon, on Lake Superior. The whole tribe of this name, have, from early days, been progressive towards the north-west. Language denotes that the race had, in early epochs, dwelt on the shores of the Atlantic, and their own traditions confirm this view. But what changes of name they had undergone, it is impossible to tell: all the names of tribal divisions of the stock, which have reached us, seem modern. They are identical with the great Chippewa family.

They were found by the French, in their discovery of the country, at the central position of the large group of islands which occupy this commanding lake, about La Pointe Chegoimegon, on Lake Superior, which has been shortened to LAPOINTE. This magnificent body of water, with its confluent rivers, affords them an opportunity for the display of their skill in canoe-craft and navigation, in which they have so much excelled. The variety of fish in its waters afforded a reliable resource at all seasons. The surrounding shores were celebrated for their abundance of the beaver, and small furred animals, so much valued on the opening of the fur-trade of Canada; and were equally celebrated for the deer, elk, moose, and bear. It was here that the French established their first mission in the upper lakes, under D'Ablon, Marquette and Marest. Their early traditions of conquest speak of celebrated men called Noka, Bianswa, and Waub Ojeeg. Under these, the martial spirit of the tribe drove the Ontagamies, and the Sauks, from the country, at the source of the Ontonagon, Montreal, Wisconsin, and Chippewa; expelled the Sioux, or Naudowessie, from the Upper St. Croix and Rum rivers, and carried them to Sandy lake, and Leech lake, at the sources of the Mississippi river.

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The principal seats of the Pillagers are at Leech lake, and at Otter-Tail lake, the latter of which is the eastern source of Red river of lake Winnipec. They also have permanent villages at lake Winnibeegish, and at the ancient Upper Red Cedar, or Cass lake.

They number about 1200 souls, who occupy a country some four hundred miles in circumference, interspersed with innumerable lakes, well supplied with fish of different species. The white-fish and trout equalling those of Lake Superior. (Vide Plate.)

Their country has been well adapted to Indians living in the hunter state; but at this day they have nearly exterminated the furred animals, and they are obliged mostly to follow the chase in the hunting grounds of the Sioux.

Formerly the Pillagers resided altogether at Leech lake, but within a few years they have made a gradual advance westward. The band at Otter-Tail lake, once on the very outskirts of their country, now number 300. The Sioux have gradually receded westward, and they have followed them closely, taking possession of their deserted villages. An informant asserts, that within a little more than a hundred years, they have advanced from the shores of Lake Superior to their present position, a distance of 300 miles.

The Pillagers, according to the accounts of their old men, separated from the main body of the tribe, at the general council-fire on Lake Superior, and before the settlement of Canada, and, ascending the St. Louis river, wrested Sandy Lake from the Dacotahs, and drove them westward, taking possession of their country around the sources of the Mississippi.

The name by which they are at present known, has its origin in the following circumstance, which they themselves relate.

The band, while encamped at the mouth of a small creek, known to this day as Pillage creek, ten miles above the mouth of Crow-Wing river, were visited by a white trader who had entered the Mississippi, and followed it a great distance with a canoe load of goods to barter with them for furs. He arrived among them sick and unable to trade. His goods having been wetted by a rain, he ordered his men to untie the bales and spread them out to dry. The Indians, being on the point of holding a grand medicine dance, were eager to trade, as on those occasions they spare no expense for

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From Indian accounts, this circumstance happened about the time of the first settlement of St. Louis, by the French. About this time, the Fur Company of Laclede, Maxan, & Co., commenced operations, and it is not an improbable surmise to suppose that the trader here mentioned was sent up by them. Another tradition denotes that the goods had come from Canada, by the way of Lake Superior, and the name of Berti is given as the name of the unfortunate trader. The act has given the name of Pillagers to this band; — a name that they are proud of, and it must be said that in modern times they have acted honorably in their intercourse with the whites.

They are a warlike people, and have always been the advanced bulwark of the Chippewas; having been in the van, they have been in the very midst of the fire of the enemy, and stood the brunt of the war with the Sioux.

It is impracticable to mention all their battles, surprises, and massacres, during this feud, and only two or three notices of these incidents, of modern date, will be given.

Their present chief, called Guel Plat by the French, Flat-Mouth, or Esh ke bug e coshe, who is now an old man, he distinguished himself in his younger days by heading a war-party of 160 warriors, who fell on a camp of fifty lodges of Sioux, and destroyed all but six men. This happened at the northern end of Long Prairie, where the Winnebago Agency is now located. A severe fight occurred here also, previous to the above, and during the life-time of Flat-Mouth's father, many men were killed on both sides, and the Sioux men driven off the prairie.

A brave warrior by the name of Black Duck, about forty years ago, raised a considerable war-party, and proceeded into the Sioux country about the head waters of St. Peter's river. All of his party returned but forty tried warriors: with these he proceeded into the very midst of the Sioux country, and falling on a large village, destroyed many lives, and would have killed all of the inhabitants had not a friendly Assineboine warned them in their own language that a large village of Sioux was near by, and that the attacked party had sent for the warriors to come to their aid. On hearing this, Black Duck suddenly struck his blow and reluctantly retreated, their ammunition being also exhausted. They had not proceeded far, when, while traversing a wide prairie, clouds of dust from the direction of the massacred village, told them that their enemy was approaching.

At this time, had they separated and each sought to escape, many might have returned home safe, but preferring to meet death together, they seated themselves on the prairie and began smoking their pipes, quietly waiting the enemy. Three hundred

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For the last hundred and fifty years, hardly a year has passed between these two tribes in peace. War has become a pastime among them. By their indiscretion, the Pillagers have often caused much loss of life to their brother Chippewas of the Mississippi, who have, of late years, been more peaceably disposed towards the Sioux.

The great massacre of the Chippewas by the Sioux, in 1837, at Stillwater and Rum river, was caused by two Pillagers killing a Sioux for the sake of his scalp.

The last considerable fight between these two hostile tribes, took place in the winter of 1847. A war-party of fifty Sioux fell on a camp of twenty-six Pillagers, while on a buffalo-hunt within the country of their enemies. The Sioux were driven off with the loss of one killed and six wounded. The Pillagers lost one of their principal elders and warriors; they had also four severely wounded. Three lives were also lost in a skirmish which took place towards the spring of the same year.

In the summer of 1849, a son of Flat-Mouth, with six Pillagers, joined a war-party from Red Lake, numbering 80 men. Falling on an equal number of Sioux, a fight ensued, in which the young chief, with his Pillagers, are said to have greatly distinguished themselves. One of them was severely wounded, and they brought a scalp home.

It will require time and strong influence to induce the Pillagers to live at peace with the Sioux. Nothing has so much hurt Flat-Mouth's influence among his bands, as his disposition for peace. In 1846, he signed a treaty of peace with the Sioux at Lapointe, through the importunity of the Sub-Agent, who gave him a flag and medal. For this act, he was obliged to flee his country for his life, and remained away nearly two years. He has never regained his former influence since, and he is now careful that he does nothing without the consent of his warriors. (Warren.)

The Pillagers, as a body, are living in the hunter state, but the game in their own country is fast disappearing; and it is evident to themselves, as well as to people acquainted with their habits and feelings, that in order to continue in this state, they must emigrate further west, which it is noticed they are gradually doing. If, otherwise, and they are forced to remain in their own country, they must turn their attention to agriculture; and for this they need and require the aid of the Government,

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But the Indians in the Merrimack valley, although properly Nipmucks, and living in distinct bands or tribes, were usually called by the English Pennacooks, from the fact that the tribe at Pennacook was the most powerful one in the valley; and under the rule of Passaconnaway, had become, as has already been seen, the head of a powerful confederacy. This position of that tribe brought its people in contact with the English on all occasions of moment, such as conferences and negotiations; and hence the English, meeting on such occasions Pennacooks almost exclusively, applied the name of Pennacooks to the tribes generally inhabiting the Merrimack valley. And in course of time, as the Indians became reduced in numbers by emigration, war, and contact with civilization, the smaller tribes became united with the larger ones, till, in 1675, the Pennacooks were the only tribe in, and had exclusive possession of, the Merrimack valley.

The Merrimack, naturally, was but a series of falls, rapids, and ripples from the Souhegan to the lower Pennacook falls (now Garvin's). These afforded the most ample opportunity for fishing, and the name of Namaoskeag was doubtless applied to that section of the river and the adjacent country around; but in course of time, as fish became more and more limited, the name Namaoskeag came to be applied to the immediate neighborhood of the principal falls, now known as Amoskeag.

The fish at these falls were most abundant, and the facilities for taking them superior to those of any other place upon the Merrimack. The river below the main fall, in the course of a few miles, is entered by a number of rivers and rivulets having their sources in the lakes at no great distance; and of course at certain seasons it was filled with alewives, waiting an opportunity to pass up those small streams, thus both on

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Then at the main fall, and at the Islands below, the river passes through the ledges and rocks in narrow channels; and upon these rocks and channels the Indian could stand through day and night, if he chose, and throw spear or dip-net without missing a fish at each "throw." And last, the various fish did not usually arrive at these falls until after the 20th of May, when the planting season was over; thus affording the Indians plenty of time to take and cure them without interruption from their agricultural pursuits, however scanty. Whereas at Pawtucket, and the rapids in that neighborhood, the fish arrived usually about the first of May, and continued through the busiest time of corn-planting. These peculiar advantages pertaining to the fishery at this place, made it, par excellence, the fishing-place; hence, as before suggested, the Indian name of Namaoskeag.

These were no ordinary advantages to the Indian, depending, as he did, for subsistence upon fish, flesh, and fowl, and such vegetables as his limited agriculture might produce. Hence we can readily suppose, that where fish were so abundant, and so readily to be taken, that there the Indians would flock together in vast numbers, to supply their future wants, and that the place would be one of great importance. Such was the fact; and Namaoskeag, for a long time, was not only the great point of attraction to all provident Indians, but was the royal residence of the ancient sagamores of the Merrimack valley.

At Namaoskeag, upon the bluff immediately east of the falls, was the main village or town occupied by the Indians, as is plainly shown by the abundance of arrow and spear-heads, and the debris of stones from which they were manufactured, together with pieces of pottery, and other unmistakable evidences of an ancient Indian town, still to be seen and found; while down the river to the Souhegan, there were smaller settlements, wherever were good fishing or planting-grounds. In Bedford, opposite Carthagena Island, on land of Hon. Thomas Chandler, and opposite the mouth of Cohas river, such settlements existed, the vestiges of which still exist at the former place,

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Passaconnaway saw the superiority of the English, and with his usual sagacity, he perceived the entire hopelessness of the attempts of his people to subdue them. His policy was to make terms of peace with them; and it was in pursuance of this policy that he disposed of his lands to Wheelwright, reserving alone his right to fishing and hunting. It was that he might have the English as a protection against his enemies, who, since the plague had thinned his people, were becoming a source of terror to them.

The Tarratines of the east, and the Maquas of the west, were making continual inroads upon the New England Indians; and the Pennacooks, like the Mohegans, were quite willing to secure the friendship and protection of the colonists. Yet in 1631, the prejudice of Dudley led him to denounce Passaconnaway as a "witch," when the old sagamore was exerting himself to keep on terms of friendship with the colonists; and in September of the following year, when Jenkins, of Cape Porpoise, had been murdered upon the territory of the old chief, while asleep in the wigwam of one of his tribe, Passaconnaway anticipated the English in the arrest, and though the murder was committed upon his extreme limits, he sent with prompt despatch, had the murderer arrested, and delivered to the English.

In 1642, upon suspicion that a conspiracy was forming among the Indians to crush the English, men were sent out to arrest some of the principal Indian chiefs. Forty men were despatched at this time to secure Passaconnaway, but he escaped them by reason of a storm. Wannalancet, his son, was not so fortunate. He was taken by the party, while his squaw escaped into the woods. But while they barbarously and most insultingly led Wannalancet with a rope, he loosened it, and attempted to make his escape, his captors firing at him, and nearly hitting him with their shot. He did not effect his escape, but was retaken.

For this outrage, the government of Massachusetts feared the just resentment of Passaconnaway, and they sent Cutshamekin, whom they had arrested upon the same occasion, and had discharged, to excuse the matter to the old chief, and to invite him to go to Boston, and hold a conference with them. The answer of the old sagamore savors a good deal of an independent spirit; and had he been younger by a half century, his reply might have been still more proud and haughty: "Tell the English," was his reply, "when they restore my son and his squaw, then will I talk with them." The answer was that of a man who felt he had been most deeply wronged. His haughty spirit must have chafed under such wrongs; and it is possible, under the

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This comparison seems more like one from civilized life, than from a savage chief just embracing Christianity, and is one of those unmistakable marks in the life of Passaconnaway that show him a man of eloquence and wisdom.

These extracts from Mr. Eliot's letters establish important facts as follows: The usual trail or path of the Indians from Sowahagen, Namaske, and places above, upon the Merrimack, to Pawtucket, was upon the east side of the Merrimack, and doubtless down the Beaver Brook. The first bridle-path from Nashua to Namaske was marked and beaten in 1648, for the accommodation of Mr. Eliot. That Eliot, before this date, had preached at Nashua, where the Sowahagen Indians had heard him. That a large body of Indians, known as Sowahagen Indians, lived upon the Merrimack, upon its west bank, above Nashua, and at and upon Sowahagen river. And lastly, that

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We hear nothing more of Passaconnaway, or his people, till 1660. At that time, being of very great age, he was seen by an Englishman, at Pawtucket, who was much conversant with the Indians upon the Merrimack. It is possible, as before suggested, that this Englishman was General Gookin.

There was a vast assemblage of the Indians at Pawtucket, and borne down with age and cares, the old sagamore, at a public feast, made his farewell speech to his people. On such occasions, the old sagamores relate the prominent incidents of their lives in songs and speeches, and give their advice to their people. It is highly probable that the fact had been announced to the confederate tribes that Passaconnaway was about to make his farewell address to his people. The anticipated event called together an unusual assemblage of Indians. The chiefs were gathered from all the confederate tribes, eager to hear the last words of their "Great Sagamore," who, by his wisdom, his natural powers of eloquence, and his supposed knowledge of the mysteries of nature, possessed an unbounded influence over the Indians.

The occasion filled all with sorrow, in spite of Indian stoicism. Passaconnaway was deeply affected, and his voice, tremulous with age and emotion, still was musical and powerful — a splendid remnant of that whose power and beauty, in the fulness and vigor of manhood, had soothed or excited the passions of assembled savages, and moulded them to suit the purposes of the speaker.

"Hearken," said he, "to the words of your father. I am an old oak, that has withstood the storms of more than an hundred winters. Leaves and branches have been stripped from me by the winds and frosts — my eyes are dim — my limbs totter — I must soon fall! But when young and sturdy, when no young man of the Pennacooks could bend my bow — when my arrows would pierce a deer at an hundred yards, and I could bury my hatchet in a sapling to the eye — no weekwam had so many furs, no pole so many scalp-locks as Passaconnaway's! Then I delighted in war. The whoop of the Pennacook was heard upon the Mohawk — and no voice so loud as Passaconnaway's. The scalps upon the pole of my weekwam told the story of Mohawk suffering.

The English came, they seized our lands; I sat me down at Pennacook. They followed upon my footsteps; I made war upon them, but they fought with fire and thunder; my young men were swept down before me when no one was near them. I tried sorcery against them, but still they increased and prevailed over me and mine, and I gave place to them, and retired to my beautiful island of Natticook. I, that can make the dry leaf turn green and live again — I, that can take the rattlesnake in my palm as I would a worm, without harm — I, who had communion with the Great Spirit, dreaming and awaking — I am powerless before the pale faces. The oak will soon break before the whirlwind — it shivers and shakes even now; soon its trunk will

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It has been supposed that Passaconnaway died about this time, and our histories are silent of him after the time of the delivery of "his dying speech to his children." But this supposition is erroneous. Passaconnaway was alive in 1663, and at the head of his tribe, so that his speech of 1660 can hardly be considered his "dying speech," without some stretch of the imagination. Captains Willard and Johnson, and others of the Commission of 1652, were rewarded by grants of land near Dunstable, upon the Merrimack. In 1656, a grant of land was made to William Brenton, of Rhode Island, at Natticook, upon both sides of the Merrimack, including what is now Litchfield, and the part of Merrimack below Souhegan river. The grant was made to Brenton in consequence of his assistance in furnishing the colonial troops with horses, in their expeditions against the Narragansets and other Indians. The grant was known as "Brenton's Farms." About 1655, Major Waldron traded in furs at Pennacook, and had a truck-house there.

In 1659, October 10th, he petitioned the Legislature of Massachusetts for the grant of a township at Pennacook. In this year Waldron had visited Pennacook in person, at Passaconnaway's invitation, and found him with a large gathering of Indians at the fort on Sugar Ball Hill. A personal view of the intervales at this place, then under cultivation by the Indians, doubtless raised in the mind of Waldron the desire to possess so fine a spot. Passaconnaway told him that Merrimack was the proper name of the river, and that Pennacook and Natticook were names of places upon it. Waldron's petition was received with favor, and a township was granted him and his associates at Pennacook.

Passaconnaway being thus "hedged in" above and below by traders, and by those having grants from the government of Massachusetts, already deprived of his planting grounds at Natticook, where he had planted for a long while, and the Legislature having announced their intention to grant his lands at Pennacook whenever "so many should present to settle a plantation there," began to think he soon should not have land enough to erect a wigwam upon. Accordingly, May 9th, 1662, he presented the following petition to the Legislature:

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PAPISSECONEWA."

The order of the court upon this petition is as follows, viz.: "In answer to the petition of Papisseconneway, this Court judgeth it meete to grant to the saide Papisseconneway and his men or associates about Natticot, above Mr. Brenton's lands, where it is free, a mile and a half on either side of Merrimack river in breadth, three miles on either side in length, provided he nor they do not alienate any part of this grant without leave and license from this Court, first obtained." Two persons were appointed surveyors to lay out this township for Papisseconewa and his associates — a duty which they executed promptly, and with faithfulness, giving him an ample tract a mile and a half in depth along the Merrimack, together with two small islands in the river. One of the islands Papisseconneway had lived upon and planted a long time. They also allotted him "about forty acres, which joyneth their land to Souhegan river."

It thus appears that in less than twenty years from the time that Passaconnaway first submitted himself to the colonists, and put himself under their protection, he and his tribe were literally reduced to beggary. The bashaba of the Merrimack valley, and the rightful owner of all its broad lands, had become a "pore petitioner" for a plantation of pine plains, and did "earnestly request the Honerd Court to grant two small islands and ye patch of Intervaile" to them — receiving them, doubtless, with all due submission and thankfulness, if not humility! Old age, as well as contact with civilization, must have done its work upon the spirit of this haughty sagamore, for him thus to have meekly asked his usurpers to grant him what was properly his own; for his sale at Exeter did not embrace "these two small islands or ye patch of intervaile;" and Massachusetts never pretended even a purchase from the Indians of the Merrimack valley, till after the date of this transaction.

Passaconnaway had four sons, if no more, and probably two daughters. His oldest

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The second son of Passaconnaway, and his successor, was Wannalancet, of whom we shall speak hereafter. We think Vnawunquosett and Nonatomenut, were the names of two other sons of Passaconnaway, as their names are attached to the petition referred to above. The wife of Nabhow appears to have been the daughter of Passaconnaway. Another daughter of his married Montowampate, the sagamore of Saugus, prior to 1628; and was separated from him in consequence of a difficulty betwixt him and her father.

Passaconnaway died prior to 1669, full of years and honors; and was spared the pain of witnessing the overthrow of his tribe. The year of his death is not known. He was alive in 1663; and as Wannalancet was at the head of the tribe in 1669, and built the fort at Pawtucket at that time, it is evident that Passaconnaway was then dead.

He was a wise, brave, and politic sagamore. He gained his great power and control over the Indians of New England, by his wisdom and bravery, but more by his great cunning. He was an accomplished juggler; and being a man of superior intelligence, he turned his juggling skill to the best account for his own personal aggrandizement, and that of his tribe. A sorcerer was supposed by the Indians to have intercourse not only with the devil, the Bad Spirit, but with Manit, the Great Spirit; hence, a skilful juggler had most unbounded influence; and when to this character was united that of Powah or priest, and physician, in one and the same man, as it was in Passaconnaway, we can most readily account for his great power and influence.

In reflecting upon the character of the Merrimack sagamore, the conviction forces itself upon one that, at the head of a powerful confederacy of Indian tribes, honored and feared by his people, and capable of moulding their fierce passions to his will, the history of New England would have told another story, had Passaconnaway taken a different view of his own destiny and that of his tribe, and exerted his well-known and acknowledged power against the enemies of his race. But Providence seems to have tempered the fierce savage for the reception and triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race in a new world." (Appendix, 5.)

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TITLE VI., LET. A., VOL. I. [1ST PAPER.]

1. Iroquois Cosmogony.
2. Origin of Men — of Manabozho — of Magic.
3. Allegory of the Origin of the Osages from a Snail.
4. Pottawatomie Allegories.
5. Story of the Hunter's Dream.
6. Story of the Red Head.
7. Story of the Magic Ring in the Prairies.
8. Story of the White Feather.

CHAP. 1. Preliminary Considerations.
CHAP. 2. Extreme antiquity of Pictorial Notation.
CHAP. 3. Elements of the Pictorial System.
CHAP. 4. Symbols employed in the Kekeenowin and Medawin.
CHAP. 5. Rites and mode of Notation of Wabeno Songs.
CHAP. 6. Symbols of Hunting, and Feats of the Chase.
CHAP. 7. Symbols of the Prophetic Art.
CHAP. 8. Symbols of Love, War, and History.
CHAP. 9. Universality of the Pictographic System, with the Explanation of Bark-roll inscriptions presented from Lake Superior.
CHAP. 10. Comparative Views of the Symbols of the Samoides, Tartars, and Laplanders. — Iroquois Pictographs.

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TITLE VI., LET. B., VOL. II. [2D PAPER.]

1. Choctaw.
2. Dacotah.
3. Cherokee.
4. Ojibwa of Chegoimegon.
5. Winnebago.
6. Chippewa.
7. Wyandot.
8. Hitchittee.
9. Comanche.
10. Cuchan or Yuma.

1. Census Roll of the Ojibwas.
2. Medicine Animal of the Winnebagoes.
3. Haצkah, a Dacotah God.
4. Indian Signatures, by Symbols, to a Treaty.
5. Menomonie Symbols for Music.

(a.) Cherokee Syllabical Alphabet.
(b.) Story of the Prodigal Son in this Character.

1. Allegory of the Transformation of a Hunter's Son into a Robin.
2. Allegory of the Origin of Indian Corn.
3. Fraternal Cruelty, or the Allegory of the Wolf-Brother.
4. Wyandot Story of Sayadio, or the Sister's Ghost.

TITLE VI., LET. C., VOL. III. [3D PAPER.]

1. Hiawatha, or the Iroquois Quetzalcoatl.
2. A Fairy Tale of the Boy-man, or Little Monedo.
3. Trapping in Heaven.
4. The Story of the Great Snake of Canandaigua — an Allegory of the Origin of the Senecas.
5. Shingebiss — an Allegory of Self-reliance in the Forest.

6. Song of the Okogis.
7. Chant of the Hawks.

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TITLE VI., LET. D., VOL. IV. [4TH PAPER.]

1. Ogollala Drawing on a Buffalo Robe.
2. Comanche Inscription on the Scapula of a Bison.
3. Symbols on the trunk of a Tree in California.
4. Symbols from a Sandstone Rock on the Little Colorado, in New Mexico.
5. Symbolic Transcript from a Rock in New Mexico, in Lat. about 34° 40'.
6. Symbolic Characters from the Valley of the Gila.
7. Pictographic Inscription from Utah.
8. Mixed, or Indo-European Inscription by a Utah Indian.

1. A Shawnee Tradition purporting to be Historical.
2. Thanayeison, a Western Iroquois, to Conrad Wiser at Kaskaskia, in 1748. — An Allegorical Account of the first coming of the Whites.

1. Wabashaw before the British Commanding Officer at Drummond Island, at the close of the War of 1812.
2. The Shawnee Prophet before the U. S. Agent at Waughpekenota, Ohio, on agreeing to migrate to the West, in 1827.

TITLE VI., LET. E., VOL. V. [5TH PAPER.]

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Intellectual Capacity and Character.

THE theory of determining the capacities of the human mind, by the exactitude of geometrical admeasurements of the cranium, and its forms, has been strenuously advocated, and as strenuously denied. The means adopted by the late Dr. Samuel George Morton, in the elaborate study of his extensive museum of Indian crania, to ascertain the volume of the brain, were of the most mechanically precise and ingenious character. When the cubical volume had been obtained by these means, it was the result of an almost necessary induction, that it should be taken as the measure of the mental capacity; and until profounder investigations shall be made, this standard of comparison of the American Blumenbach must be regarded as fixed.

When we come, however, to apply it to the wide-spread tribes and families of the continent, as they exist, the laws of physics and mind do not appear completely to coincide; at least, there appears to be a necessity of discrimination between what may be termed the primordial measure of the intellect, and its active or expanded powers or qualities. It is from this view, that classifications of barbarous and civilized tribes, on merely physical data, appear to be untenable. Thus it is perceived that the Peruvians of the Atacama period (and this was the common Peruvian mind, as well before as under the rule of the Incas) had less cranial capacity, judged by the Mortonian standard, than other tribes in more northerly latitudes, who were yet exclusively in the hunter state. The examination of the Tlascalan and Aztec skulls, compared with tribes in the Mississippi valley, denoted similar results; while the Iroquois, and some other leading stocks, who were not advanced in arts or skill beyond the hunter and warrior state, had a volume of brain superior in cubical capacity to the South American tribes. The Iroquois were, together with the Lenapes and original Algonquins, and Appalachians,

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This question may be examined in relation to the Vesperic tribes, without following the ingenious author over the southern latitudes of the continent. The author is indebted to Mr. Phillips, who was the assistant of Dr. Morton, in his elaborate and carefully conducted cranial admeasurements, for re-examinations of the several groups of the home tribes, as established on the principle of languages. By these it is shown that the Iroquois, who evinced a superiority of mind by a confederacy of cantons, but who were still in the hunter and warrior state, had, in their highest specimens, a cranial volume of 102 1/2; while the Algonquins, as examined in a Chippewa cranium, gave 91; a Miami, 89; and a Natic, 85; the Appalachians, judged by a Muscogee, 90; a Utchee, 84; a Cherokee, 87. At the same time, the tribes of inferior manners and customs reached in the predatory Ottagamies, 92; in the idle and dissipated Pottawattamies, 92; in the buffalo-hunting Assineboins, 101; the fierce Dacotas, 90; and even in the degraded Chinooks and other Oregonians, 80. (Vol. II., p. 335.) We should be cautious in prescribing the range of intellect by arithmetical data, when we perceive such developments in the intellectual standard adopted.

The power of numeration, in the United States' tribes, has been deemed, from the earliest voyages, to be very low. By recent inquiry it is seen, however, that they are by no means deficient. They generally reveal a decimal system, having original names for the digits to 10. They then repeat these names, with a conjunction thrown between them, till 20, for which there is a separate inflection to the decimal, and this inflection is added to the primary particle for numbers till 100, for which there is a separate denomination. By awaking the latent powers of computation, most of the tribes, and all the instanced ones, it is believed, are found capable of denoting high numbers. Inquiries made of the Choctaws prove that they can compute, by doubling their denominators, or by new inflections, to 1,000,000,000; the Dacotas to the same; the Cherokees to 300,000,000; the Chippewas to 1,000,000,000; the Winnebagoes, the same; the Wyandots, 3,000,000; the Hitchites, but 1,000; the Pillagers, 100,000; the Camanches, but 30, etc., and even the wild and predatory Yumas have the decimal system. (Vol. II., p. 204.)

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There have been, until very recently, no attempts by the Indians to invent a symbol for a sound, unless we consider such those devices for the few onomapoetic names which all barbarous nations accidentally possess. The devices which they draw on trees, bark scrolls, or sometimes the faces of rocks, are merely ideographic symbols, the general purport of which is understood by their tribesmen. Such devices are also drawn on the tabular pieces of cedar placed at the head of their graves. (Plate 56, Vol. I.) When this mode of commemoration aspires to any thing higher, as an ideographic or pictorial record of success in hunting or war, or skill in necromancy, it is called by the Algonquins kekewin, meaning instructions. (Vol. I., p. 350.) In all the latter instances, it is particularly deemed the art of their Medais, doctors, prophets, or priests, and becomes a branch of aboriginal learning; and the art then reaches beyond the knowledge of the commonalty. Its proper explanation, at all times, depends on the memory of the inscriber, for this knowledge of secret and occult things belongs only to the hieratic class, who derive their influence, chiefly, from the tenacity with which they keep this reserved knowledge. The sacred songs of their jossakeeds and powwows are also recorded by these pictorial appeals to the eye and memory. To the neophyte they reveal the agency of the spiritual and the mysterious; and these pictographs are not understood by the mere hunters, or common people. They are taught by the medais and priest-class, often at great expense, and are carved on wood or bark by the priestly sophomores of the medicine-dance society. A horse is known to have been given for one of these annotated songs. This system of pictographical representation has been exhibited, in its details, in relation to each of the great topics of Indian life. (Vide Vols. I., II., III. and IV.) Nothing of a higher character of notation has been observed, until the invention of the syllabical symbols of the Cherokee alphabet, represented, with examples, in Vol. II., page 228.

Surrounded by the forest, with the great phenomena of light and darkness, meteors and lightning, and the wild tumult of tornadoes, lakes and waterfalls, means are ever present to excite his wonder or fancy. A firm believer in daemonology, and a subtle system of genii, giants, dwarfs, and magical agencies, the Indian mind is filled with panoramas of the most vivid and sublime images. To him the wilderness is a storehouse of symbols; and when the mood for conversation and amusement comes in his lodge circle, he relates to the wondering listeners tales and legends, which have sometimes their origin, perhaps, in traditions, but are generally the combinations of a wild and grotesque fancy. In these tales of the wigwam, the sounds and sights of the wilderness are so many voices, which he understands. The world is a phantasmagoria; every thing is wonderful, when the mind is prepared to see wonders. The birds and quadrupeds he encounters are enchanted human beings. He sees the little footprints of fairies on the sands; the creaking of the branches of the antique trees of the forest are voices of spirits and monedas, who hover around his path for good or evil. He sees

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Because an Indian is furious in his resentments, in a state of war or fierce personal feuds, or cruel and unsparing in his wrath, it is not to be inferred that this is his natural or ordinary mood. But, it may be asked, is this unscrupulous fury, under such circumstances, greater than that of a brutal commander, who puts a whole garrison to the sword merely because they have defended a work with heroic bravery. Is his endurance at the stake, and his shouts and songs of triumph under torment, more strange than the firmness which has sustained martyrs in dying for a principle. We should regard the dawning of light in the Indian mind with a just appreciation, since., if with his imperfect glimpses of the true purposes of life, he evinces the intelligence denoted, it would seem to be only necessary to enlarge the circle of his knowledge to enable him clearly to see, and warmly to admire, the beauty and comely proportion of the entire fabric of civilization. But when the Indian quits the field of his imaginations and superstitions, leaving, for a moment, the ideal regions of his hopes and fears, which have been created by the teachings of his Indian priesthood and ghostly counsellors

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Nor is he deficient when he comes to discourse of things of the heart and of its affections. Stoical and imperturbable, indeed, he is in his manner; but it is sufficient to allude to the names of Garrangula; of Logan; of Sagoyawatha; or Red Jacket; of Cannasatigo, Pontiac, Skenandoa, of the once powerful Passaconnaway, and a line of renowned aboriginal speakers, to sustain the conclusion that they have produced men of intellectual, energetic, and eloquent minds.

So long as the North American Indian is in civilized society, he is much under the influence of its precepts. But when he retires from the council-house to his native woods, and hears the wild murmur of nature around him, he subsides into that state of domestic repose, nonchalance and indolence which are so characteristic of the Indian life. It is then that the aboriginal state assumes its most poetic garb. With the open heavens continually before him, his thoughts and dreams are of the spirit-world; and as a social being in his wigwam, he aims to illustrate life, in every aspect, by appeals to the wonderful and the mysterious.

Wonderful, indeed, in many respects, is the man: but he is not altogether inexplicable. If the physiologist does not perceive why the Indian should not develop mind — if he aims to preserve ideas of the strength and skill of his distinguished men, by mnemonic appeals to a rude pictography — if he invents fictions to amuse his hearers — if he is eloquent in council and debate, when he has great things at stake — if, in fine, his faculties can be stimulated to understand the mental operations of arithmetic, and to comprehend the elements of knowledge — it is not perceived why the aboriginal man is deficient in his natural intellectual powers. The gospel mystery of the union of God and

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Is not the race, then, worthy of the highest humanities bestowed on them?

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TITLE VII., LET. A., VOL. II. [1ST PAPER.]

1. Mandans.
2. Pontiac Manuscript — a Journal kept by a Civilian within the Fort, during the Siege of Detroit, by the Confederate Indians, in 1763.
3. Traditionary Gleams from the Island of Hayti (the ancient San Domingo) of Anacoana, the unfortunate Queen of the Caribs.

TITLE VII., LET. B., VOL. III. [2D PAPER.]

1. Strength of the upper Posts of 1778, from a Manuscript found in his own Hand-writing, among the Papers of James Madison.
2. Memoranda of a Journey in the Western Parts of the United States of America, in 1785. By Lewis Brantz — from the Original MSS.
3. Relation of the Voyages and Adventures of a Merchant Voyager, in the Indian Territories of North America, in 1783. By John Baptiste Perrault. From the unpublished MSS.

TITLE VII., LET. C., VOL. IV. [3D PAPER.]

1. Diary of Matthew Clarkson on a Commercial Excursion West of the Alleghanies, in 1766. From the Original MSS.
2. Passages of the Incidents of a Tour in the Semi-Alpine Region traversed by De Soto, in 1542, West of the Mississippi River, from the Original Journal. By Henry R. Schoolcraft. [Deferred from Vol. III.]
3. Narrative of a Journey, in 1737, from Tolpehocken, in Pennsylvania, through the Forests to Onondaga, the Seat of the Iroquois Power in New York. By Conrad Wiser, Esq., Indian Agent and Provincial Interpreter. From the translated MSS.
4. Remarks concerning the Savages of North America, in the European Magazine, Vol. VI., A. D. 1784. By Dr. B. Franklin.
5. Seneca Traditions of the Era of the Revolutionary War. By Asher Tyler.

TITLE VII., LET. D., VOL. V. [4TH PAPER.]

Position and State of Manners and Arts in the Creek Nation, in 1791.

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Topical History.

PHILADELPHIA, April 29, 1795.

SIR: — Pursuant to the letter of instruction which I had the honor to receive from you on the 18th of August, 1790, I accompanied Brigadier-General M'Gillivray and the chiefs and warriors of the Creek nation, who attended at the treaty in New York, from that place to their nation. Fortunately no disaster happened on our voyage to St. Mary's river, or on our journey by land through the country, that occasioned me to use the authority you were pleased to give me of drawing on you, in case it should be found necessary, and we all arrived safely at the first Indian village, on the Flint river, the latter part of September.

Situated as I found myself among these people, it was not only my inclination, but I found it my interest, to become as useful as possible to the great chief; and on all occasions I endeavored to impress on the jealous minds of the Indians in general, that the white people of the United States were sincere and candid in all their overtures of peace and friendship towards them; and that, being myself in their power, I was pledged to them for the truth of what I had told them, and which their friends had been witnesses of at the great white town.

I conceived that General M'Gillivray viewed me for some time rather in the light of a spy than otherwise; but from a uniform declaration to the contrary, and a persevering attention to his person, I was flattered that all his suspicions were removed; and from an alteration in his conduct towards me, I have reason to believe that I gained his confidence effectually.

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I found from experiment that to learn the language, and to pronounce it well, must be a task of several youthful years; therefore, after obtaining a vocabulary of their principal words and some familiar sentences, I directed my inquiries more particularly to the other objects contained in your letter.

In making notes while in the country, I found myself watched with an eye of jealousy, and therefore thought it prudent to keep them out of sight, which I always did, even from my only friend, Mr. M'Gillivray himself.

Going into the country down at the southern corner of it — travelling up the Chattahoosee river to the Coweta district — from thence crossing the country westward to little Tallassie — and by coming out of it by the route through all the districts and tribes of the upper Creeks and Natchez, together with a variety of jaunts and visits to the different towns and villages of the Coosades and Alabamas while residing at little Tallassie, has afforded me a comprehensive view of the whole country of the lower and upper Creeks, and an opportunity of seeing all their largest villages, and of becoming generally known among them.

The following sheets contain the results of my observations during the excursion, which I humbly beg leave to have the honor of offering to you, with a hope that they contain such information, with respect to the natives and the fine country they possess, as may be pleasing and satisfactory to yourself, as well as interesting and useful to the government.

To be attached to the Indians and their manner of living, is at once sacrificing all the social virtues to the disgusting habits of savage barbarism.

It is a custom with M'Gillivray to spend his winters on the sea-coast among the Spaniards, leaving his wife, servants, and horses at a plantation he has near Tensau, within the borders of West Florida, about 180 miles down the Alabama river; and of returning to pass his summers in the nation. I therefore could not have remained in the country through the winter season without suffering the inconveniences of cold, and probably of hunger, and these without an associate or companion.

These, sir, are the reasons that induced me to leave the country so soon; and I presume that whoever may try the experiment, even for no longer a time than I have done, will find sufficient exercise for their patience, fortitude, and solitary philosophy.

I have the honor to be, sir,

With the most perfect veneration and respect,

Your devoted and obedient servant,

CALEB SWAN,
Deputy Agent, Creek Nation.

HON. HENRY KNOX,
Secretary of the War Department.

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August 19th, 1790. Sailed from New York with Brigadier-General M'Gillivray, and the Indian chiefs of the Creek Nation, bound to St. Mary's river, in Georgia.

September 1st. Captain Smith, of the schooner we were in, imprudently run the vessel through a large breaker, at the north end of Cumberland Island. The vessel struck on the sands several times, and afterwards went over.

Sept. 2d. Arrived all safe at Captain Burbeck's post, on St. Mary's, and received a visit of compliment from Don Carolus Caxton Howard, Secretary of the Government of East Florida, Mr. Leslie and others, from St. Augustine.

Sept. 8th. Proceeded up the river, and remained three days at Colonel L. Marbery's, procuring horses. Here several of the chiefs of the lower Creeks separated, and pursued their own routes homeward.

Sept. 11th. Took our departure from Spanish Creek, at the head of St. Mary's river.

Sept. 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th. Incessant rains, and five of our horses died on the way.

Sept. 21st. Came to the Alabaha, a branch of St. Mark's river, and found it flooded by the late rains for half a mile on each side, over its natural banks. Our present prospects are gloomy: our provisions and clothing wasted and spoiled by the rains, our progress impeded by the floods, and we are 170 miles advanced from any white settlement.

Sept. 22d. Endeavored to build a canoe; having but one small hatchet, the attempt was fruitless.

Sept. 23d. The waters continue to rise.

Sept. 24th. The waters come to a stand.

Sept. 25th. The Indians killed a stray cow in the woods, and stretched her skin over hoops, into the shape of a bowl, with which to make the experiment of getting over the river.

Sept. 26th. Early in the morning the Indians commenced the business by swimming and towing the skin boat by a string, which they hold in their teeth, getting up a general war-hoop, to frighten away the voracious alligators that inhabit this river in vast numbers. By uncommon and hazardous exertion, we were, with all our baggage

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Sept. 27th. Supplied ourselves with fifteen fresh horses, taken from J. Kinnard's negroes, whom we met in the woods, bound to St. Mary's with a drove for sale.

Sept. 28th, 29th. Journeyed in the wilderness, being much exhausted with fatigue, and on short allowance of provisions.

Sept. 30th. Arrived at the Chehau towns, on Flint river; found the Indians assembled in great numbers to hear the tidings from their chief, whom they had given up for lost.

October 1st. Encamped at John, or Jack Kinnard's, living on the borders of the lower Creeks and Seminolies, and here replenished our provisions.

Oct. 5th. Crossed the Chattahoosee river at the Broken Arrow, twelve miles below the Cassita and Coweta towns.

Oct. 7th. Crossed the Tallapoosee at the town of the Tuckabatches. Here the chief (M'Gillivray) made some further communications to the people, who were assembled to hear his talk.

Oct. 8th. Arrived at Little Tallassie, on the Allabamous river.

Oct. 20th. Attended a general meeting called by the Mad Dog, king of the Tuckabatches, where M'Gillivray made some further communications to the Red people. Some seem pleased; others throw their tobacco into the fire, in disgust.

Oct. 21st. Snow fell an inch deep in this country.

Oct. 22d. The moon totally eclipsed, and served to regulate my account of time, which from a variety of causes I have not been able to keep accurately.

Oct. 29th. A young woman, sister to M'Gillivray's wife, hanged herself in a fit of violent passion, but was cut down and saved.

November 20th. A woman related to M'Gillivray hanged herself at Little Tallasse, and was privately buried in the village the same evening.

Nov. 26th. Charles Weatherford brought a letter from the Secretary of War, dated 15th September last.

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December 15th. Left Little Tallassie for the upper country, and arrived at the Natchez villages in two days.

Dec. 20th. Went over to the district of the Hillabes.

Dec. 21st. Arrived at the Ufalas, and attended the Square three times to the ceremony of the black-drink, at the pressing invitation of the White Lieutenant.

Dec. 22d. Crossed the Chattahoossee by the upper war-path, at the horse-ford, sixty miles above the Cassitah and Coweta towns.

Dec. 21th. Crossed Flint river at the upper falls, and stretched down the country in a south-east direction.

Dec. 27th. Crossed the Oakmulgee at the upper falls.

Dec. 28th. Crossed the Oconee at the falls ten miles above Captain Savage's post, at the Rock landing.

1791. January 17th. Left the Rock landing, and arrived in Philadelphia, via New York, on the 13th March, 1791.

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St. Mary's river is very crooked, with a wide open marsh on each side, from its mouth upwards for thirty miles, where the marsh is terminated by thick woods; the river then becomes nearly straight for thirty miles further, up to Allen's, an Indian trader at the head of its navigation. At this trading-station, the river is like a dead creek, about four fathoms deep, and ten rods wide. It is well laid down in the Rev. Mr. Morse's map, but the great Okafanoka Swamp, which is the source of the river, is misplaced entirely; instead of spreading itself north-westwardly into Georgia, it extends away southerly into East Florida.

The old path from St. Mary's to the Creek Nation, is difficult to be traced, having been little used since 1783. After leaving St. Mary's, for 100 miles westward it is a continual soft, miry, pine barren, affording neither water nor food for men or horses; it is so poor, indeed, that the common game of the woods is not to be found in it.

The Alabaha is a considerable river, not laid down in any of the common maps of the southern country, 100 miles west from the head of St. Mary's, and runs in a southerly direction. It is often difficult to be crossed; the banks are low, and a trifling rain swells it to more than a mile in width. In a freshet the current is rapid, and passengers are liable to be entangled in vines and briars, and drowned; there is also real danger, from its great number of hungry alligators.

From the Alabaha it is ninety miles to the Chehau villages, low down on Flint river; and a continual pine barren all the way, though less sterile than that left behind.

Flint river is about thirty rods wide, and from twelve to fifteen feet deep in summer time, with a gentle current. It is thirty miles from the villages of the Chehaus to Jack Kinnard's, a rich half-breed chief; from Kinnard's to the tribes of the Euchees and Hitchetees, is about eighty miles, where the path crosses the Chattahoosee river, twelve miles below the Cussitah and Coweta towns, at a village called the Broken Arrow.

The Chattahoosee river is about thirty rods wide, and very rapid and full of shoals. The lands in general upon it are light and sandy, and the clay of a bright red. The lower Creeks are settled in scattering clans and villages, from the head to the mouth of this river; and from the high color of the clay, their huts and cabins, at a little distance, resemble clusters of new-burned brick-kilns.

From the Chattahoosee to the Tallapoosee river, is about seventy miles, by the main path which crosses at the falls just above the town of the Tuckabatches.

The Tallapoosee rises in the high-lands near the Cherokees; it runs through the high country of the Oakfuskie tribes in a westerly direction, and is full of rocks, falls, and shoals, until it reaches the Tuckabatchees, where it becomes deep and quiet; from

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The Coosa river also rises in the high-lands near the Cherokees; its course is generally south, running through the country of the Natchez and other tribes of the upper Creeks, the roughest and most broken district in the whole nation. It is rapid, and so full of rocks and shoals, that although there is a sufficiency of water, it is hardly navigable even for canoes. It joins with the Tallapoosee, at little Tallassie, and there forms the beautiful river Alabama, which continues in a southwestwardly direction to the bay of Mobile.

This long river, and its main branches, form the western line of settlements or villages of the Creek nation, but their hunting-grounds extend 200 miles beyond, to the Tombigbee river, which is the dividing line between their country and that of the Choctaws.

The Alabama river is remarkable for its gentle current, pure waters, and good fish; it runs about two miles an hour; it is seventy or eighty rods wide at the head of it, and from fifteen to eighteen feet deep in the driest season of the year. The banks are about fifty feet high, and seldom, if ever, overflowed. Travellers who have navigated it in large boats, in the month of May, have gone in nine days from little Tallassie to Mobile bay, and compute the distance by water to be about 350 miles. This river, for forty miles downward, and probably much farther, is very beautiful; it has high, clear fields all along the banks, that afford romantic views of its different courses and windings for miles together. Having no shoals, or sand spits, it might be navigated with large boats up to M'Gillivray's, at Little Tallassie, through the centre of an inviting, fertile and extensive country, capable of producing every thing necessary to the comfort and convenience of mankind. The surrounding country is well watered; the soil is of a dark brown color, with deep strata of red or brown clay, and with the slovenly management even of the savages, it produces most abundantly.

It is well timbered with oak, hickory, mulberry, poplar, wild cherry, wild locust, laurel, cypress, bay, gum, cedar, iron, and white cork woods. The low-lands and bottoms are interspersed with numerous cane-brakes, of enormous growth; and the higher grounds, and banks of rivers, produce ginseng, and the seneca, or snake-root, and the genuine sarsaparilla of Mexico in perfection.

There are also a great variety of other medicinal plants and herbs, which remain to be analyzed by the skilful botanist, and, Avithout doubt, will be found as valuable and important as any hitherto discovered.

There are abundance of small waterfalls, and mill-seats of constant water to be had, in all parts of the country, within a few miles of each other.

There are useful mines and minerals on the Alabama, some specimens of which I have collected and have the honor herewith to present.

The western part of the country of the Creeks particularly, though but small compared

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The whole of the country claimed by the Creeks, within the limits of the United States, at a moderate computation, must contain nearly 84,000 square miles, according to Bowen's maps and surveys, annexed hereto, which, by good judges, are affirmed to be accurate.

At present it is but a rude wilderness, exhibiting many natural beauties, which are only rendered unpleasant by being in possession of the jealous natives.

The country possesses every species of wood and clay proper for building, and the soil and climate seem well suited to the culture of corn, wine, oil, silk, hemp, rice, wheat, tobacco, indigo, every species of fruit trees, and English grass; and must, in process of time, become a most delectable part of the United States; and with a free navigation through the bay of Mobile, may probably, one day or other, be the seat of manufactures and commerce.

The climate of this inland country is remarkably healthy; the wet and dry seasons are regular and periodical. The rainy season is from Christmas to the beginning of March, and from the middle of July to the latter end of September. Between these two periods there is seldom much rain or cloudy weather.

The constant breezes, which are probably occasioned by the high hills and numerous rapid water-courses, render the heat of summer very temperate; and towards autumn they are delightfully perfumed by the ripening aromatic shrubbery, which abounds throughout the country.

The winters are soft and mild, and the summers sweet and wholesome.

There are no stagnant waters or infectious fogs about the rivers; consequently, neither alligators, mosquitoes, or sand-flies, have ever been known to infest this pleasant country.

The animals of the forest, in this country, differ little from those at the northward; the tiger, or panther, is more common here, but of less size than those taken towards Canada: large black wolves are plenty, and, I believe, peculiar to the country.

The birds in this region resemble ours, in the northern States, in every respect; but, in addition, may be counted the land stork, of prodigious size, commonly called the pine barren hooping crane. There are also great numbers of paroquets, and the beautiful red bird, so much sought for by Europeans, and called by them the Virginia nightingale.

The reptiles here are (except being generally larger, and more thrifty) very much like those found in the northern climates. But the gofer, a species of the land tortoise, might deserve some attention from the curious naturalist. This creature lives on the land altogether, feeds on grass, and chews the cud like a sheep. He retires to his hole, in some sandy place, in day-time, and at night comes out to feed. He is of the shape of common land tortoises, and of enormous strength; although but of about

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Men of the best information and longest acquaintance with these Indians give the following account of the rise and progress of the nation.

Tradition, handed down from one generation to another, has established a general belief among them (which may be true), that a long time ago some strange, wandering clans of Indians from the north-west found their way down to the present country of the Seminolies: there meeting with plenty of game, they settled themselves in the vicinity of the then powerful tribes of the Florida and Appalachian Indians: that for some time they remained on a friendly footing with each other. The new-comers were styled Seminolies (signifying wanderers, or lost men).

These wanderers from the north increased, and at length became so powerful a body as to excite the jealousy of their Appalachian neighbors. Wars ensued, and finally the Seminolies became masters of the country. "The remnants of the Appalachians were totally destroyed by the Creeks in 1719."

In process of time, the game of the country was found insufficient to support their increasing numbers. Some clans and families emigrated northward, and took possession of the present district of the Cowetas; having established themselves there, other emigrations followed, and in time spread themselves eastward as far as the Oakmulgee river, and other waters of Georgia and South Carolina, and westward as far as the Tallapoosee and Coosa rivers, which are the main branches of the Alabama. Here they were encountered by the Alabama nation, whom they afterwards conquered; and by restoring to them their lands and river, gained their attachment, and they were incorporated with the Creek nation. The Creeks became famous for their abilities and warlike powers; and being possessed of a well watered country, were distinguished from their ancestors (the Seminolies of the low barren country) by the name of Creeks or Muscogies.

The kind soil, pure water, and air of their country being favorable to their constitutions as warriors, has perhaps contributed to give them a character superior to most of the nations that surround them.

Their numbers have increased faster by the acquisition of foreign subjects, than by the increase of the original stock. It appears long to have been a maxim of their policy, to give equal liberty and protection to tribes conquered by themselves, as well as to those vanquished by others — although many individuals, taken in war, are

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The Alabamas and Coosades are said to be the first who adopted the ceremonies and customs of the Creeks, and became part of the nation. The Natchez, or Sunset Indians, from the Mississippi, joined the Creeks about fifty years since, after being driven out of Louisiana, and added considerably to their confederative body. And now the Shawanese, called by them Sawanes, are joining them in large numbers every year, having already four towns on the Tallapoosee river, that contain near 300 war men, and more are soon expected.

The Seminolies are in small wandering hordes through the whole country, from the point of East Florida to the Appalachiocola river, near which they have Micasuka, and some other permanent villages. Their country being sandy and barren, occasions those who cannot live by fishing along the sea-shore to scatter in small clans and families through the inland country, wherever they can find hommocks of rising ground, upon which they can raise corn, or in other places accommodated with water, which is very scarce throughout the country. They are considerably numerous, but poor and miserable beyond description; being so thinly scattered over a barren desert, they seldom assemble to take black drink, or deliberate on public matters, like the upper and lower Creeks.

The Seminolies are the original stock of the Creek nation, but their language has undergone so great a change, that it is hardly understood by the upper Creeks, or even by themselves in general. It is preserved by many old people, and taught by women to the children as a kind of religious duty; but as they grow to manhood, they forget and lose it by the more frequent use of the modern tongue.

They are more unsettled, in their manner of living, than any other district of people in the nation.

Their country is a place of refuge for vagrants and murderers from every part of the nation, who, by flying from the upper and lower districts to this desert, are able to elude the pursuit and revenge of even Indians themselves.

The term Seminolies (signifying wanderers) is well applied to them, for they are, most of them, continually shifting from one place to another every year.

The foregoing account of the Seminolies was given by General M'Gillivray, who seldom, if ever, has visited their country. He is known to them as their great chief, but few of them have ever seen him.

The Seminolies are said to be principally under the influence of Jack Kinnard, a rich Scotch half-breed, living on the neck of land between Flint and the Chattahoosee

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Kinnard is a noted trader, farmer, and herdsman. He has two wives, about forty valuable negroes, and some Indian slaves. He has from 1200 to 1500 head of cattle and horses, and commonly from 5000 to 6000 Spanish dollars in his house, which are the produce of cattle he sells.

He accumulated his property entirely by plunder and freebooting, during the American war, and the late Georgia quarrel. This raised him to the dignity of a chief, and enabled him to go largely into trade, by which he supplies all the Indians around him, who are dupes to his avarice. He cannot read or write, and commonly has some mean person about his house to do it for him. He is addicted to excessive drunkenness, and, like all half-breeds, is very proud of being white-blooded. He is a despot, shoots his negroes when he pleases, and has cut off the ears of one of his favorite wives, with his own hands, in a drunken fit of suspicion.

He is of so much consequence, in his own country, as to threaten the Spaniards into compliance with almost any thing he demands.

The following is a copy of a letter he dictated and sent to Don Juan Nepomecena de Quesada, the Governor of St. Augustine, in August, 1790. The Governor, in consequence, released Allen, the prisoner, and sent an express near 700 miles, up to Little Tallassie, with a statement of the affair to Mr. M'Gillivray.

"I send you this talk. Our people have had a talk given out here, that our beloved white man, James Allen, is put in jail by your talk, for making the red men take away Lang's cattle, when Lang owed him 170 chalks, which was right. James Allen is our beloved white man, and must be given to us in twenty days back again, to buy our horses, as he did before. Now — give him back, and save you trouble — which shall be — now. This is my talk!

The Bully is a man of as much property and influence as Kinnard. He is about fifty years old — keeps three young wives. For size and strength, has never yet found his equal. He is master of the art of English boxing — and has been the Sampson of these Philistines from his youth upward.

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The smallest of their towns have from 20 to 30 houses in them, and some of the largest contain from 150 to 200, that are tolerably compact. These houses stand in clusters of four, five, six, seven and eight together, irregularly distributed up and down the banks of rivers or small streams; each cluster of houses contains a clan, or family of relations, who eat and live in common. Each town has a public square, hothouse, and yard near the centre of it, appropriated to various public uses — of which I shall endeavor to give a particular description, together with the ceremonies performed therein, hereafter.

The following are the names of the principal towns of the upper and lower Creeks, that have public squares, beginning at the head of the Coosa or Coosa-hatcha river, viz:

1. Upper Ufalas,
2. Abbacoochees,
3. Natchez,
4. Coosas,
5. Oteetoocheenas,
6. Pinclatchas,
7. Pocuntullahases,
8. Weeokees,
9. Little Tallassie,
10. Tuskeegees,
11. Coosadas,
12. Alabamas,
13. Tawasas,
14. Pawactas,
15. Autobas,
16. Auhoba,
17. Wetumpkees, big,
18. Wetumpkees, little,
19. Wacacoys,
20. Wacksoyochees.

Central, inland, in the high country, between the Coosa and Tallapoosee rivers, in the district called the Hillabees, are the following towns, viz:

21. Hillabees,
22. Killeegko,
23. Oakchoys,
24. Slakagulgas,
25. Wacacoys.

And on the waters of the Tallapoosee, from the head of the river downward, the following, viz:

26. Tuckabatchee Teehassa,
27. Totacaga,
28. New York,
29. Chalaacpauley,
30. Soguspogus,
31. Oakfuskee,
32. Ufala, little,
33. Ufala, big,
34. Sogahatches,
35. Tuckabatchees,
36. Big Tallassie, or half-way house,
37. Clewauleys,
38. Coosahatches,
39. Coolamies,

42. Muckeleses.

Of the lower Creeks, beginning on the head-waters of the Chattahoosee, and so on downward, are the towns of
43. Chelucconinny,
44. Chattahoosee,
45. Hohtatoga,
46. Cowetas,
47. Cussitahs,
48. Chalagatsca, or broken arrow,
49. Euchees, several,
50. Hitchatees, several,
51. Palachuola,
52. Chewackala.

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Besides near 20 towns and villages of the little and big Chehaus, low down on Flint and Chattahoosee rivers, the names of which I could not ascertain.

From their roving and unsteady manner of living, it is impossible to determine, with much precision, the number of Indians that compose the Creek nation.

General M'Gillivray estimates the number of gun-men to be between 5000 and 6000, exclusive of the Seminolies, who are of little or no account in war, except as small parties of marauders, acting independent of the general interest of the others.

The useless old men, the women and children may be reckoned as three times the number of gun-men, making in the whole about 25,000 or 26,000 souls. Every town and village has one established white trader in it, and there are several neighborhoods, besides, that have traders. Each trader commonly employs one or two white pack-horse men; besides these, there is, in almost every town, one family of whites, and in some two, who do not trade; these last are people who have fled from some part of the frontier, to this asylum of liberty.

It may be conjectured with safety, that, to include the whites of every description throughout the country, they will amount to nearly 300 persons — a number sufficient to contaminate all the natives; for it is a fact that every town is principally under the influence of the white men residing in it; and as most of them have been attached to the British in the late war, and of course have, from loss of friends and property, or persecution, retained bitter resentments against the people of the United States, and more especially against those living on the frontiers. They often, to have revenge, and to obtain plunder that may be taken, use their influence to send out predatory parties against the settlements in their vicinity.

The Creek Indians are very badly armed. The chief has made it a point to furnish them with muskets in preference to rifles, which, from the necessity of being wiped out after every shot, have been found less convenient than the former. Their muskets are of the slender, French manufacture, procured through the Spanish government at Pensacola, but are so slightly made, that they soon become unfit for any service.

If the Indians were able to purchase for themselves, they would, however, prefer rifles in all cases, because they find them more sure and lasting: a good one will, at any time, command the price of 100 chalks, or $50, to be paid in skins or horses in the country.

The most influential chiefs of the country, either in peace or war, are the Hallowing King, of the Cowetas; the White Lieutenant, of the Oakfuskies; the Mad Dog King, of the Tuckabatchees; the old Tallassie King Opilth-Mico, of the Half-way House at Big Tallassie; the Dog Warrior, of the Natchez; and Old Red-shoe, King of the Alabamas and Coosades. A treaty made with the before-named chiefs would, probably, be communicated to all the people of the country, and be believed and relied upon.

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OF THE SQUARE. — The public squares, placed near the centre of each town, are formed by four buildings of equal size, facing inwards, and enclosing an area of about thirty feet on each side. These houses are made of the same materials as their dwelling-houses, but differ by having the front which faces the square left entirely open, and the walls of the back sides have an open space of two feet or more next to the eaves, to admit a circulation of air. Each of these houses is partitioned into three apartments, making twelve in all, which are called the cabins; the partitions which separate these cabins are made of clay, and only as high as a man's shoulders, when sitting. Each cabin has three seats, or rather platforms, being broad enough to sleep upon. The first is raised about two feet from the ground, the second is eight inches higher, and the third, or back seat, as much above the second. The whole of the seats are joined together by a covering of cane-mats, as large as carpets. It is a rule, to have a new covering to the seats every year, previous to the ceremony of the busk; therefore, as the old coverings are never removed, they have, in most of their squares, eight, ten and twelve coverings, laid one upon the other.

The squares are generally made to face the east, west, north and south. The centre cabin, on the east side, is always allotted to the beloved, or first men of the town, and is called the beloved seat. Three cabins, on the south side, belong to the most distinguished warriors; and those on the north side, to the second men, etc. The west side is appropriated to hold the lumber and apparatus used in cooking black-drink, war-physic,

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Up under the roofs of the houses are suspended a heterogeneous collection of emblems and trophies of peace and war, viz: eagles' feathers, swans' wings, wooden scalping-knives, war-clubs, red painted wands, bunches of hoops on which to dry their scalps, remnants of scalps, bundles of snake-root war-physic, baskets, etc.

Such posts and other timbers about the square as are smooth enough to admit of it, have a variety of rude paintings of warriors' heads with horns, horned rattlesnakes, horned alligators, etc.

Some of the squares in the red or war-towns, which have always been governed by warriors, are called painted squares, having all the posts and smooth timber about them painted red, with white or black edges. This is considered a peculiar and very honorary mark of distinction. Some towns also have the privilege of a covered square, which is nothing more than a loose scaffolding of canes laid on poles over the whole of the area between the houses. Whence these privileges arose, I could never learn; and it is a doubt with me if they know themselves.

Travelling Indians, having no relations in the town, often sleep in the public square as they are passing on their journey. This is one of their ancient rites of hospitality. And poor old men and women, suffering for want of clothes, are entitled to sleep in the hot-houses of the town they live in, if they please.

The square is the place for all public meetings, and the performance of all their principal warlike and religious ceremonies.

If a man dies in the town, the square is hung full of green boughs as tokens of mourning; and no black-drink is taken inside of it for four days.

If a warrior or other Indian is killed from any town having a square, black-drink must be taken on the outside of the square; and every ceremony in its usual form is laid aside until satisfaction is had for the outrage.

Each square has a black-drink cook, and two or three young warriors that attend every morning when black-drink is to be taken, and warn the people to assemble by beating a drum.

Each square, as necessary appendages, has a hot-house at the north-west corner of it, and a May-pole, with a large circular beaten yard around it, at the south-west corner, which is called the chunkey-yard. These two places are chiefly appropriated to dancing. The yard is used in warm, and the hot-house in cold weather.

The hot-house is a perfect pyramid of about twenty-five feet high, on a circular base of the same diameter. The walls of it are of clay, about six feet high, and from thence drawn regularly to a point at the top, and covered round with tufts of bark. Inside of the hot-house is one broad circular seat made of canes, and attached to the walls all around. The fire is kindled in the centre; and the house, having no

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Is a military institution, blended with religious opinions.

The black-drink is a strong decoction of the shrub well known in the Carolinas by the name of Cassina, or the Uupon Tea.

The leaves are collected, parched in a pot until brown, boiled over a fire in the centre of the square, dipped out and poured from one pan or cooler into another, and back again, until it ferments and produces a large quantity of white froth, from which, with the purifying qualities the Indians ascribe to it, they style it white-drink; but the liquor of itself, which, if strong, is nearly as black as molasses, is by the white people universally called black-drink.

It is a gentle diuretic, and, if taken in large quantities, sometimes affects the nerves. If it were qualified with sugar, etc., it could hardly be distinguished in taste from strong bohea tea.

Except rum, there is no liquor of which the Creek Indians are so excessively fond. In addition to their habitual fondness of it, they have a religious belief that it infallibly possesses the following qualities, viz.: That it purifies them from all sin, and leaves them in a state of perfect innocence; that it inspires them with an invincible prowess in war; and that it is the only solid cement of friendship, benevolence, and hospitality. Most of them really seem to believe that the Great Spirit or Master of breath has communicated the virtues of the black-drink to them, and them only (no other Indians being known to use it as they do), and that it is a peculiar blessing bestowed on them, his chosen people. Therefore, a stranger going among them cannot recommend himself to their protection in any manner so well as by offering to partake of it with them as often as possible.

The method of serving up black-drink in the square is as follows, viz.:

The warriors and chiefs being assembled and seated, three young men acting as masters of ceremony on the occasion, each having a gourd or calabash full of the liquor, place themselves in front of the three greatest chiefs or warriors, and announce that they are ready by the word choh! After a short pause, stooping forward, they run up to the warriors and hold the cup or shell parallel to their mouths; the warriors receive it from them, and wait until the young men fall back and adjust themselves to give what they term the yohullah, or black-drink note. As the young men begin to aspirate the note, the great men place the cups to their mouths, and are obliged to drink during the aspirated note of the young men, which, after exhausting their breath, is repeated on a finer key, until the lungs are no longer inflated. This long aspiration is

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It is generally served round in this manner three times at every meeting; during the recess of serving it up, they all sit quietly in their several cabins, and amuse themselves by smoking, conversing, exchanging tobacco, etc., and in disgorging what black-drink they have previously swallowed.

Their mode of disgorging, or spouting out the black-drink, is singular, and has not the most agreeable appearance. After drinking copiously, the warrior, by hugging his arms across his stomach, and leaning forward, disgorges the liquor in a large stream from his mouth, to the distance of six or eight feet. Thus, immediately after drinking, they begin spouting on all sides of the square, and in every direction; and in that country, as well as in others more civilized, it is thought a handsome accomplishment in a young fellow to be able to spout well.

They come into the square and go out again, on these occasions, without formality.

The ceremony of the busk is the most important and serious of any observed by the Creek Indians.

It is the offering up of their first fruits, or an annual sacrifice, always celebrated about harvest time.

When corn is ripe, and the cassina or new black-drink has come to perfection, the busking begins on the morning of a day appointed by the priest, or fire-maker (as he is styled) of the town, and is celebrated for four days successively.

On the morning of the first day, the priest, dressed in white leather moccasins and stockings, with a white dressed deer-skin over his shoulders, repairs at break of day, unattended, to the square. His first business is to create the new fire, which he accomplishes with much labor by the friction of two dry sticks. After the fire is produced, four young men enter at the openings of the four corners of the square, each having a stick of wood for the new fire; they approach the new fire with much reverence, and place the ends of the wood they carry, in a very formal manner, to it. After the fire is sufficiently kindled, four other young men come forward in the same manner, each having a fair ear of new corn, which the priest takes from them, and places with great solemnity in the fire, where it is consumed. Four young warriors then enter the square in the manner before mentioned, each having some of the new cassina. A small part of it is given to the new fire by the priest, and the remainder

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At this time, the warriors and others being assembled, they proceed to drink black-drink in their usual manner. Some of the new fire is next carried and left on the outside of the square, for public use; and the women allowed to come and take it to their several houses, which have the day before been cleaned, and decorated with green boughs, for its reception; all the old fire in the town having been previously extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away, to make room for the new. During this day, the women are suffered to dance with the children on the outside of the square, but by no means suffered to come into it. The men keep entirely by themselves, and sleep in the square.

The second day is devoted by the men to taking their war-physic. It is a strong decoction of the button snake-root, or senneca, which they use in such quantities as often to injure their health by producing spasms, etc.

The third day is spent by the young men in hunting or fishing, while the elder ones remain in the square and sleep, or continue their black-drink, war-physic, etc., as they choose. During the first three days of busking, while the men are physicking, the women are constantly bathing. It is unlawful for any man to touch one of them, even with the tip of his finger; and both sexes abstain rigidly from all kind of food or sustenance, and more particularly from salt.

On the fourth day, the whole town are assembled in the square, men, women, and children promiscuously, and devoted to conviviality. All the game killed the day before by the young hunters, is given to the public; large quantities of new corn, and other provisions, are collected and cooked by the women over the new fire. The whole body of the square is occupied with pots and pans of cooked provisions, and they all partake in general festivity. The evening is spent in dancing, or other trifling amusements, and the ceremony is concluded.

N. B. All the provisions that remain are a perquisite to the old priest, or fire-maker.
ANTHNY. ALEX. M'GILLIVRAY.

Courtship is always begun by proxy. The man, if not intimately acquainted with the lady of his choice, sends her his talk (as it is termed), accompanied with small presents of clothing, by some woman of her acquaintance. If the young woman takes his talk, his proxy then asks the consent of her uncles, aunts, and brothers (the father having no voice or authority in the business), which being obtained, the young woman goes to him, and they live together during pleasure or convenience. This is the most common mode of taking a wife, and at present the most fashionable.

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But if a man takes a wife conformably to the more ancient and serious custom of the country, it requires a longer courtship, and some established formalities.

The man, to signify his wishes, kills a bear with his own hands, and sends a panful of the oil to his mistress. If she receives the oil, he next attends and helps her hoe the corn in her field; afterwards plants her beans; and when they come up, he sets poles for them to run upon. In the meantime he attends her corn, until the beans have run up and entwined their vines about the poles. This is thought emblematical of their approaching union and bondage; and they then take each other for better or for worse, and are bound to all intents and purposes. A widow having been bound in the above manner, is considered an adulteress if she speaks or makes free with any man, within four summers after the death of her husband.

With a couple united in the above manner, the tie is considered more strongly binding than in the other case; being under this obligation to each other, the least freedom with any other person, either in the man or woman, is considered as adultery, and invariably punished by the relations of the offended party, by whipping, and cutting off the hair and ears close to the head.

The ceremony of cropping, as it is called, is done in the following manner. The relations of the injured party assemble and use every stratagem to come at the offender. This is called, in the phrase of the country, raising the gang upon him. Each of the gang carries a stick nearly as large as a hoop-pole. Having caught the offender, they beat him or her, as the case may be, until senseless, and then operate with the knife. It is extremely difficult to evade this punishment; but if the offender can keep clear of them by flight or otherwise until they lay down their sticks, the law is satisfied, and they (one family only excepted) have no right to take them up again. But the great and powerful WIND FAMILY, of whom Mr. M'Gillivray is a descendant, if defeated in the first attempt, have the right of raising the gang and lifting the cudgels as often as they please until punishment is duly inflicted.

The Creeks believe in a good and bad spirit, and in a future state of rewards and punishments.

The good spirit they style Hesבkבdum Eseי, which signifies God, or Master of Breath.

The bad spirit is styled Stefuts Asיgף, which signifies the devil, or rather sorcerer.

They believe that the good spirit inhabits some distant, unknown region, where game is plenty, and goods very cheap! where corn grows all the year round, and the springs of pure water are never dried up.

They believe, also, that the bad spirit dwells a great ways off, in some dismal

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They have an opinion that droughts, floods, and famines, and their miscarriages in war, are produced by the agency of the bad spirit. But of these things, they all appear to have confused and irregular ideas, and some sceptical opinions.

When one of a family dies, the relations bury the corpse about four feet deep, in a round hole dug directly under the cabin or rock whereon he died. The corpse is placed in the hole in a sitting posture, with a blanket wrapped about it, and the legs bent under it and tied together. If a warrior, he is painted, and his pipe, ornaments, and warlike appendages are deposited with him. The grave is then covered with canes tied to a hoop round the top of the hole, and then a firm layer of clay, sufficient to support the weight of a man. The relations howl loudly and mourn publicly for four days. If the deceased has been a man of eminent character, the family immediately remove from the house in which he is buried, and erect a new one, with a belief that where the bones of their dead are deposited, the place is always attended by "goblins and chimeras dire."

They believe there is a state of future existence, and that according to the tenor of their lives, they shall hereafter be rewarded with the privilege of hunting in the realms of the Master of Breath, or of becoming Seminolies in the regions of the old sorcerer.

But as it is very difficult for them to draw any parallel between virtue and vice, they are most of them flattered with the expectation of hereafter becoming great war-leaders, or swift hunters in the beloved country of the great Hesבkבdum Eseי.

The Indians eat every green wild fruit they can lay their hands upon, which is said to engender the fevers that sometimes attack them in the latter part of summer; and their children are often afflicted with worms from the same cause.

The cassia fistularius, or pod of the wild locust, which grows here in abundance, furnishes them late in autumn with a kind of sweetmeats, which they gather and bring home wherever they can find it; and it is esteemed a good antidote in the complaints of their children.

Their diseases are real and imaginary. In their complaints and disorders, they sometimes employ male, but more frequently female practitioners, whom they call very cunning men or women, to attend them; and as all their disorders are to be cured by the herbs and styptics of the woods, assisted by magic, their mode of proceeding is

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Stitches in the side, or small rheumatic pains, which are frequent with them, are often considered as the effect of some magic wound. They firmly believe that their Indian enemies have the power of shooting them as they lay asleep, at the distance of 500 miles. They often complain of having been shot by a Choctaw or Chickasaw from the midst of these nations, and send or go directly to the most cunning and eminent doctress for relief. The cunning woman tells them that what they have apprehended is verily true, and proceeds to examine and make the cure. In these cases, scratching or cupping is the remedy; or, as is often the case, sucking the affected part with her mouth, produces to their view some fragment of a bullet, or piece of a wad, which she had purposely concealed in her mouth to confirm the truth of what she had asserted; after this, a few magic draughts of their physic must be administered, and the patient is made whole.

Gonorrhoeas are common among them, but not virulent. Contrary to what has been believed, their cures are undoubtedly imperfect, and not to be depended upon.

It is an established rule, that pregnant women be entirely alone at the time of delivery; and this rule is rigidly adhered to. Nature seems to have fortified them with strength to undergo the operation without assistance. On the 12th of December, 1790, four women came from the white ground, ten miles from Little Tallassie, to sell horse-ropes to the beloved man. The day was cold and rainy, with a sleet of snow; they stayed all night. About midnight, one of them, a young woman, was taken in travail; her mother was with her, and immediately ordered her to take some fire and go into the swamp, about thirty rods from the out-house where they slept. She went alone, was delivered of her child, and at ten o'clock next morning, being bare-footed and half naked, took the infant on her back, and returned home through the rain and snow, which still continued to fall, without the least apparent inconvenience.

This circumstance, had I not been present and seen the woman with the infant on her back, I might have been doubtful of its possibility.

In their periodical habits, the women are equally tenacious of being seen or touched, and never leave their hiding-places during the continuance of them.

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They have an opinion that, to sleep with women, enervates and renders them unfit for warriors; men therefore but seldom have their wives in the apartments where they lodge. Every family has two huts or cabins; one is the man's, and the other belongs to his wife, where she stays and does her work, seldom or ever coming into the man's house, unless to bring him victuals, or on other errands.

The women perform all the labor, both in the house and field, and are, in fact, but slaves to the men, being subject to their commands without any will of their own, except in the management of the children. They are universally called wenches; and the only distinction between them and the negro women is, that they have Indian children; and when a man would have you understand that he is speaking of his wife, he designates her as his son's mother, etc. Yet even in this unhappy, servile state, the women are remarkable for their care and attention to the men, constantly watching over them in their desperate drunkennesses and quarrels, with the utmost solicitude and anxiety.

Beauty is of no estimation in either sex. It is strength, or agility, that recommends the young man to his mistress; and to be a skilful or swift hunter is the highest merit with the woman he may choose for a wife. He proves his merit and abilities to her as often as he can, by presenting her, or her guardian uncles and aunts, with bear's oil, and venison of his own killing.

Simple fornication is no crime or reproach among the Creeks; the sexes indulge their propensities with each other promiscuously, unrestrained by law or custom, and without secrecy or shame. If a young woman becomes pregnant before she is married, which most of them do, the child is maintained in her clan without the least murmuring.

If a young woman becomes pregnant by a fellow whom she had expected to marry, and is disappointed, she, in revenge, is authorized by a custom of the country, to destroy the infant at the birth, if she pleases, which is often done, by leaving it to perish in the swamp where it was born, or throwing it into the water. And, indeed, to destroy a new-born infant is not uncommon in families that are grown so numerous as to be supported with difficulty; it is done by mutual consent of the clan and parents, and without remorse.

The refined passion of love is unknown to any of them — although they apply the word love to rum, and every thing else they wish to be possessed of. The very frequent suicides committed in consequence of the most trifling disappointment, or quarrel, between men and women, are not the result of grief, but of savage and unbounded revenge.

Marriage is considered only as a temporary convenience, not binding on the parties

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The married women are termed bound wenches — the single girls, free wenches. The least freedom with a bound wench is considered criminal, and invariably punished, or attempted to be punished by the cropping law.

A plurality of wives is allowed of — a mother and her two daughters are often kept by one man, at the same time; but this is most frequently by white traders, who are better able to support them. A large portion of the old and middle-aged men, by frequently changing, have had many different wives, and their children, scattered around the country, are unknown to them.

Few women have more than two children by the same father; hence they have found the necessity of conferring the honors of chiefs and micos on the issue of the female line, for it would be impossible to trace the right by the male issue.

The custom of frequently throwing away their old wives, and taking new ones, is well adapted to their barbarous mode of life. The total want of that conjugal affection which dignifies families in civilized society, perhaps arises from the little pleasure that can be experienced in the arms of women continually harassed by hard labor, and dirty drudgery. Therefore, this inconstancy is favorable to their population: without it they could scarcely keep up their numbers; and even with it, they increase very slowly.

By a confused intermixture of blood, a whole tribe become uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters and cousins to each other; and as some members of each clan commonly wander abroad, and intermarry in distant towns, and others from those towns come in and supply their places, the whole body of the people have become connected by the ties of blood and hospitality, and are really but one great family of relations — whose ceremonies, manners, and habits are nearly alike, though their language differs considerably.

The father has no care of his own child. The invariable custom is, for the women to keep and rear all the children, having the entire control over them until they are able to provide for themselves. They appear to have sufficient natural affection for them; they never strike or whip a child for its faults. Their mode of correction is singular: if a child requires punishment, the mother scratches its legs and thighs with

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They say that this punishment has several good effects; that it not only deters the child from mischief, but it loosens the skin, and gives a pliancy to the limbs; and the profusion of blood that follows the operation, serves to convince the child that the loss of it is not attended with danger, or loss of life: that when he becomes a man and a warrior, he need not shrink from an enemy, or apprehend that the wounds he may receive, and loss of blood, will endanger his life.

Scratching is also practised among young warriors, as a ceremony or token of friendship. When they have exchanged promises of inviolable attachment, they proceed to scratch each other before they part. This is more frequently done in drunken frolics than at any other time. After a rum-drinking, numbers of them appear covered with blood, and lacerated from their shoulders down to their heels. Such marks of friendship are indelible, and effectually remind them of their friendly promises as long as they live.

The common food of the Creek is Indian corn, pounded and boiled, with which they mix a small quantity of strong lees of the ashes of hickory wood. It is boiled until the corn is tender, and the liquor becomes as thick as rich soup. The lees give it a tart taste, and preserve it from souring by the heat of the climate. From day to day they have it constantly standing in large pots or pans, with a spoon in it, ready for use. It is called by the Indians Oafka, and by the whites, Thin-drink. Those who have been long used to it are excessively fond of it. The Indians, who eat not much of any other food, go to it, and eat of it, about once an hour all day.

They are without system or rule in any thing. They have no regular meals. Thoughtless, negligent and wasteful, they sometimes have abundance, and at other times nothing at all to eat. But in all their vicissitudes, they betray no appearance of feeling distress. They are so extremely indolent, that, from the time they have consumed the meats killed in the winter, until the ripening of the new corn, they are all straitened, and many of them much distressed for food, and suffer under an annual famine of about two months every summer.

The men, in general, are of a good size, stout, athletic and handsome: the women are also of a good height, but coarse, thick-necked and ugly. Being condemned, by the custom of the country, to carry burdens, pound corn, and perform all the hard labor, they are universally masculine in appearance, without one soft blandishment to render them desirable or lovely. Both sexes have a phlegmatic coldness and indifference, uncommon and unknown to most white people. When a man meets his wife and children, after an absence of some months, in which time she has not heard a word

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All the children in the country, up to the age of twelve or fourteen years (to judge from appearance), go stark naked in summer and winter: and the women, in general, wear no clothes in summer, except one single, simple, short petticoat, of blue stroud, tied around the waist, and reaching only to the upper part of the knees; and in winter they have only the addition of a blanket (if they can get it), thrown over their shoulders.

A stranger going into the country must feel distressed, when he sees naked women bringing in huge burdens of wood on their backs, or bent under the scorching sun, at hard labor in the field; while the indolent, robust young men are riding about, or stretched at ease on some scaffold, amusing themselves with a pipe, or a whistle.

The Indians are credulous. Enveloped in dark ignorance, and shut out from all communion with the enlightened world, the few of them that have a desire for knowledge are deprived of the means of obtaining it. They are naturally fickle, inconstant, and excessively jealous of the encroachments of the white people. They easily become the dupes of the traders that live in their towns, who have established so complete an ascendency over them, that, whatever they tell them is implicitly believed, until contradicted by some more artful story. Thus situated, it is in the power of an ignorant vagabond trader, at any time, over a pipe and cup of black-drink, to persuade them that the most solemn treaty is no more than a well-covered plot, laid to deprive them of their lands, under the specious pretences of friendship and presents, and that the sooner they break it the better. This arouses their jealousy, which, with their insatiable thirst for plunder, will probably, so long as the white villains are among them, continually destroy the good effects intended by treaties.

For near forty years past, the Creek Indians have had little intercourse with any other foreigners but those of the English nation. Their prejudice in favor of English men, and English goods, has been carefully kept alive by tories and others, to this day. Most of their towns have now in their possession British drums, with the arms of the nation, and other emblems, painted on them; and some of the squares have the remnants of old British flags yet preserved in them. They still believe that the "great king over the water" is able to keep the whole world in subjection.

About three years ago, a Mr. Bowles, of the Bahamas, formerly a lieutenant in the Pennsylvania loyalists (aided and abetted, as is said, by Lord Dunmore, in order to disturb the trade of the country, of which he had been disappointed by the superior address of Panton Leslie & Co.), availing himself of the prejudices of the Indians,

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Mr. Bowles remained several months among the Indians, and after having run himself in debt to many of the traders from 2000 to 3000 chalks each, he was ordered by Mr. M'Gillivray to quit the country. Captain Dalton, to save his life, fled in disguise to Pensacola, where he obtained a passage to Ireland. Captain Wellbanks fled to the Cherokees, and remains there. And Captain Robins, a carpenter by trade, was detained in the nation as a useful artificer, and was employed by M'Gillivray to build him a house; after working near three years, he left it unfinished, and in November last stole two horses and a negro wench from M'Gillivray, with which he ran away.

When Mr. Bowles left the country, he persuaded several Indians and half-breeds, of note, to follow him; they stole a vessel in Mobile bay, and went over to the Bahamas, where Bowles selected five of the handsomest of his followers, viz: three Cherokees and two Creeks, and sold the others to the wreckers. With these five he went to Nova Scotia, and from thence to London.

Arriving in London at the time of the expected Spanish war, he represented that 20,000 Indian warriors (of whom those with him were the principals) were zealous to drive the Spaniards all out of Mexico, and had sent to request the aid of their old English friends — in consequence of which, they were much caressed at court!

The new year commences with the Creeks immediately after the celebration of the busk, at the ripening of the new corn, in August. They divide the year into two seasons only, to wit: winter and summer; and subdivide it by the successive moons, beginning the WINTER with the moon of

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They count the number of days or years, either past or to come, by tens. Having no exact method of keeping or reckoning their time, they can seldom tell nearer than within one month of the time any remarkable occurrence took place in the preceding year; but circumstances, or any speeches that might have attended such occurrence, they remember accurately. There is not one in the whole nation knows how old he is.

They know when the winter or hunting-season approaches, by a change of the face of nature — and they also know when the summer or planting-season advances, by the increasing heat and vegetation — and take little pains to inform themselves further on the subject.

The summer-season, with the men, is devoted to war, or their domestic amusements of riding, horse-hunting, ball-plays, and dancing; and by the women, to their customary hard labor.

Their various dances are indescribable. They are always designated by the name of the animal which they exhibit in them, viz.: the fish-dance is led down by the most expert woman or man, having a wooden fish in his hand; the snake-dance is performed in the same manner; the buffalo-dance is distinguished by the most violent exertion of the feet, legs, and shoulders. But the most favorite dance in the country is the eagle-feather dance, which is conducted with a degree of moderation.

In general, their dances are performed with the most violent contortions of the limbs, and an excessive exertion of the muscular powers.

They have sometimes most farcical dramatic representations, which terminate in the grossest obscenity.

Their ball-plays are manly, and require astonishing exertion, but white men have been found to excel the best of them at that exercise; they therefore seldom or ever admit a white man into the ball-ground. Legs and arms have often been broken in their ball-plays, but no resentments follow an accident of this kind.

The women and men both attend them in large numbers, as a kind of gala; and bets often run as high as a good horse, or an equivalent of skins.

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Soon after the settlement of South Carolina, an intercourse and trade took place from Fort Moor, in that province, between the white people and the lower Creeks, which appears to have been the first communication they had with British subjects; before this, they traded altogether with the French of Louisiana, and the people of Pensacola and St. Mark's. The upper Creeks continued to send all their skins to the French of Mobile for many years after the trade of the lower Creeks had been drawn into South Carolina.

In 1732, when the colony of Georgia was founded by General Oglethorpe, he called eight tribes of the lower Creeks to a treaty in Savannah. He states the number of warriors in these tribes then, to be 1300. By the kind treatment and good management of Governor Oglethorpe, they soon became strongly attached to the British interest.

"The French of Louisiana, jealous of this step, immediately sent troops and agents among the upper Creeks, and erected a fort at Little Tallassie, of fourteen guns. By establishing a post in the midst of them, they found means to attach them to the French people — the Choctaws being before in their interest, as well as the Chickasaws, and lower Cherokees. In 1739, General Oglethorpe called his allies (the lower Creeks), to a conference at the Cowetas, and attended in person, renewed the former treaties, and confirmed them in their attachment to the British Government; at this conference, deputies attended from the Oakfuskies, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees. The Cherokees and Creeks afterwards joined the British in an expedition against the Spaniards at St. Augustine, in the year 1742."

It appears that from 1732, the affections of the upper and lower Creeks were divided between the French and English, until the peace of 1763; when the Floridas were ceded to the English, and the French fort "Allabamous," at Little Tallassie, was then abandoned by them. The British kept up a captain's command, at this fort, for some years after the peace of 1763; but at that time, possessing all the country-eastward and southward, to which the Indians were obliged to come to trade, the British withdrew their troops, and sent numbers of agents and commissaries among them, by which they effectually attached them to the "great king over the water." By pursuing the same policy with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees, they monopolized all the trade of these four great nations, until the American Revolution; and indeed during the late war, and ever since the peace of 1783, the trade is, in fact, beneficial only to British subjects.

Their strong prejudices in favor of the English nation, and of everything they see

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The government, if it may be termed one, is a kind of military democracy. At present, the nation has a chief whose title is Steutsa'cco'-Cho'ota', or the great beloved man. He is eminent with the people only for his superior talents and political abilities. Every individual has so high an opinion of his own importance and independency, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to impress on the community at large the necessity of any social compact, that should be binding upon it longer than common danger threatened them with the loss of their lands and hunting ranges.

Each town has its chief or mico, and some experienced war-leaders; it has also what they style beloved second men, whose business is to regulate the police of the town and public buildings. They are generally men of the best memories, that can tell long stories, and give minute details of ancient customs.

The micos are counsellors and orators, and until very lately had a control over the warriors and leaders, whose business was to conduct the scouts and war-parties.

The micos were formerly styled the kings, or beloved men of the white towns, which were (as they say) once considered as places of refuge and safety to prisoners who could escape death or torture by flight, and find an asylum in these sacred places.

Other towns were called war, or red towns, and differed from the white towns of the micos, by being governed entirely by warriors.

This is said to have been their former government, but is now done away.

In conformity to the modern government, the chiefs and principal warriors have annual meetings to deliberate on public affairs. The time and place is fixed by a chief; and the space between the time of warning and that of assembling is called the broken days. They assemble in the public square of some central town, drink black-drink, exchange tobacco, and the chiefs and orators afterwards proceed to give or receive advice with profound gravity and moderation.

The influence of the great beloved man, on all occasions, consists in the privilege of advising and not in the power of commanding. Every individual is at liberty to choose whether or not he shall engage in any warlike enterprise. But the rage of young men to acquire war-names, and the thirst of plunder in the elder ones and leaders, are motives sufficient to raise gangs of volunteers to go in quest of hair and horses at any time when they are disengaged from hunting. It is little matter with them what the pretence for going to war may be. They think that force constitutes right; and victory is an infallible proof of justice on their side; and they attack as boldly as they are indefatigable in securing a scalp, or to obtain plunder.

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Young men remain in a kind of disgrace, and are obliged to light pipes, bring wood, and help cook black-drink for the warriors, and perform all the menial services of the public square, until they shall have performed some warlike exploit that may procure them a war-name, and a seat in the square at the black-drink. This stimulates them to push abroad, and at all hazards obtain a scalp, or as they term it, bring in hair.

When the young warrior, after a successful expedition, approaches the town he belongs to, he announces his arrival by the war-hoop, which can be heard a mile or more, and his friends go out to meet him. The scalp he has taken is then suspended on the end of a red painted wand, and, amidst the yelling multitude, accompanied with the war-song, is brought in triumph by him into the square, or centre of the town, where it is either deposited, or cut up and divided among his friends, who then dub him a man and a warrior, worthy of a war-name, and a seat at the ceremony of the black-drink, which he receives accordingly.

Those who have seldom been abroad, and are not distinguished by war-names, are styled old women, which is the greatest term of reproach that can be used to them. They have also one other common term of reproach, viz.: Estי dogo, i. e. you are nobody; this is a very offensive expression, and cautiously to be used; to say, you are a liar, is a common and harmless reply; but to use either of the other two expressions would bring on a quarrel at once.

The complete equipment of a war-party is simply to each man a gun and ammunition, a knife, a small bag of gritz, or pounded corn, and two or three horse-ropes, or halters. These parties are commonly small; never more than forty, fifty, and sixty go out together, as may be seen by their war-camps frequently to be found in the woods, which are so constructed that the exact number of men in the party can at once be ascertained.

They make a point of taking boys and girls prisoners, whom they carefully preserve to supply the places of such of their people as have been, or may be killed from among them. But they save grown men and women as prisoners only when avarice takes precedence of barbarity; and they set the price of ransom upon them according to the rank and estimation in which they may be held among their countrymen.

When prisoners of the latter description are brought into any of their towns, the Indian women, by paying a small premium of tobacco to the victorious warriors, are permitted to have the honor of whipping them as they pass along. This is often practised, to the pain and ridicule of the unfortunate victim of their sport and barbarity.

It is asserted, that in most cases, if the Indians are warmly attacked by their enemy, and can once be dislodged from their several trees, that they will content themselves with one scalp, which they divide among the whole, then scatter and make the best speed home to their several towns to tell their friends of the affair. They are much given to lying and exaggeration on these occasions.

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Their ruling passion seems to be war; and their mode of conducting it constitutes some part of their general government. And next they are devoted to hunting.

The present great beloved man, who left Georgia in disgust about the year 1776, and attached himself to the upper Creeks, where he was born, by the advice of his father immediately set about placing himself at the head of the nation. His kindred and family connexion in the country, and his evident abilities, soon gave him such influence among them that the British made him their commissary, with the rank and pay of Lieutenant-Colonel, under Colonel Brown, then superintendant.

After the English had abandoned the nation, in 1782, this beloved man found it necessary, in order to carry on the war with success against the Georgians, to undertake a reform in the policy of the nation, which had for a long time been divided by faction.

He effected a total revolution in one of their most ancient customs, by placing the warriors in all cases over the micos or kings, who, though not active as warriors, were always considered as important counsellors. The micos resisted this measure for some time; and the struggle became at last so serious, that the beloved chief had one Sullivan and two others, partizans of the micos, put to death in the public squares. They were all three white men who had undertaken to lead the faction against him; but he finally crushed the insurgents, and effected his purposes.

The spirit of opposition still remained against him in the old Tallassie king, Opilth Mico, who, with his clan, pronounced M'Gillivray a boy and an usurper, taking steps that must be derogatory to his family and consequence. And under these circumstances he undertook to treat separately with the Georgians. The consequences were, his houses were burnt in his absence, and his corn and cattle destroyed. Notwithstanding, he remained refractory for a long time, as well as some of the most important of the lower towns, until, finding the Georgians aimed at them indiscriminately, and a Mr. Alexander had killed twelve of their real friends (the Cussitahs), they dropped their internal disputes, and united all their efforts, under the great chief, against the frontiers.

There is but one institution in the nation that resembles civilization: it was introduced by M'Gillivray, and although sometimes observed, is oftener dispensed with.

If an Indian steals a horse, he is liable, by this law, to return him, or another of equal value, and pay a fine of thirty chalks, or fifteen dollars; if he is unable to do so, he may be tied and whipped thirty lashes by the injured party. But, as in other cases, the infliction of punishment depends, at last, on the superior force of the injured clan.

When the inhabitants of any particular town are notorious for horse-stealing, or have acted otherwise unadvisedly, the chief has the entire power of punishing them collectively by removing the white man from among them, and depriving them of

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Scarcely a day passes but complaints or accusations, of some kind or other, are laid before Mr. M'Gillivray by some Indian or white trader. His uniform method of proceeding is cautiously to hear the evidence of the parties, and never to decide on the case. By putting off the trial from one time to another, the parties at length forget their resentments, and often compromise the quarrel between themselves. It is good policy in the chief not to give decisions in the disputes of his people; for all his systems would not defend him against the effects of the resentment of the party against whom he might in justice be obliged to give an opinion.

Some young men of his relations, and several active warriors living about Little Tallassie, whom the chief keeps continually attached to him by frequent and profuse presents, serve him as a kind of watch, and often in the capacity of constables — pursue, take up, and punish, such characters as he may direct; and on some occasions have acted as executioners.

It is a maxim of his policy to give protection to outlaws, debtors, thieves, and murderers from all parts of the country, who have fled in great numbers from the hands of justice, and found an asylum in the Creek nation. The whites living among the Indians (with very few exceptions), are the most abandoned wretches that can be found, perhaps, on this side of Botany Bay; there is scarcely a crime but some of them has been guilty of. Most of the traders, and all their hirelings and pack-horse-men, are of the above description.

All the traders have licenses, and particular towns allotted to them respectively, with the liberty of selling their places to such purchasers as shall be approved of by Mr. M'Gillivray, or of exchanging with each other; but the Indians don't suffer them to cultivate much land, upon the supposition that if the traders raise produce themselves, they will not purchase the little they have to sell.

Ten miles below Little Tallassie, on the Alabama river, there are three mounds which appear to have been intended as works of defence. The annexed sketch is the copy of one taken on the spot on the 18th November, 1790.

No. 1 is a mound 25 feet high, on a base of 33 feet diameter by measurement; the sides of it are so upright,

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In the high country of the upper Creeks, five miles below the towns of the Natchez, between two mountains, there are the traces of a regular fortification, of an oblong square, containing near an acre of ground, having four bastions and a gate-way. The banks are about three feet above the surface of the ground, and the ditch, which is the inside, as much below the surface; one of the bastions contains a large limestone spring of water, which rises in this spot, and has nearly water enough to carry a mill.

There are preserved in the Tuckabatches' town, on the Tallapoosee river, some thin pieces of wrought brass, found in the earth when the Indians first dug for clay to build in this place. Nobody can tell how long since they were dug up; but the Indians preserve them as proofs of their right to the ground, having descended to them by their departed ancestors, from time immemorial.

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TITLE VIII., LET. A., VOL. II. [1ST PAPER.]

1. Osteological Character.
2. Facial Angle.
3. Stature.
4. Fossil Remains of the American Race.
5. Complexion.
6. Hair.
7. Eyes.
8. Artificial Modifications of the Skull.
9. Volume of the Brain.

TITLE VIII., LET. B., VOL. III. [2D PAPER.]

1. Prefatory Note on the Unity of the Human Race.
2. Examination and Description of the Hair of the Head of the North American Indian.
By Peter A. Browne, LL. D.
Collection of Indian Pile.
Deficiency of Lustre, etc.
Particular Description of the Hair of different Families.
Elementary Parts of the Pile.
Button, Follicle, Shaft, Color, Fibre, Ductility, Tenacity.
Ancient Specimens of Indian Hair.

TITLE VIII., LET. C., VOL. IV. [3D PAPER.]

1. Remarks on the Means of obtaining Information to advance the Inquiry into the Physical
Type of the Indian.
2. Considerations on the Distinctive Characteristics of the American Aboriginal Tribes.

TITLE VIII., LET. D., VOL. V. [4TH PAPER.]
The Aboriginal Features and Physiognomy.

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Physical Type of the Indian Race.

FROM the earliest period the Indian tribes have been regarded as possessing what naturalists term a set of suite features — such as are not only peculiar in their development and physical type, but forming one of the distinct varieties of the human race. That a definite basis might be established for making observations on their manners, habits, and condition, it appeared necessary to determine this type. Having referred the question to medical and scientific gentlemen, eminent in this line of research, the results of their investigations have been submitted in prior volumes. It only remains definitely to allude to these separate papers.

The cranial museum of the late Dr. Samuel George Morton is believed to be larger, and to embrace a greater variety of the human species, than any other on this side of the Atlantic. His "Crania Americana," embracing his elaborate studies of the subject, is, however, beyond the reach of most readers. In 1851, at the request of the author, he consented to review his collection of Indian crania, in connexion with a considerable number of new specimens, collected on the Oregon and Pacific coasts by Captain C. Wilkes, in his Exploring Expedition, which that gentleman, with the concurring assent of the National Institute, had given me permission to examine, and which were transported for this purpose to Philadelphia. Lithographs of ten of these crania are submitted with the paper he furnished on this occasion, which contains a synopsis of the physical type of the Red Man. (Vol. II., p. 315.) He had entirely completed his observations on this subject prior to his decease. Wishing to apply the results more particularly to the families of the Vesperic tribes, the author requested Mr. Phillips, the confidential and operative assistant of Dr. Morton in his craniological labors, to re-examine the entire collection of skulls, with a view to

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