arts practiced among them, such as making wampum, constructing bows, arrows, and spears, preparing matting and skins for domestic use, and fashioning rude personal ornaments.

Individual and national pride prevailed among the Aboriginals. They were ambitious of distinction, and therefore war was the chief vocation, as we have said, of the men.' They generally went forth in parties of about forty bowmen. Sometimes a half-dozen, like knightserrant," went out upon the war-path to seek renown in combat. Their weapons were bows and arrows, hatchets (tomahawks) of stone, and scalping-knives of bone. Soon after they became acquainted with the Europeans, they procured knives and hatchets made of iron, and this was a great advance in the increase of their power. Some wore shields of bark; others wore skin dresses for protection. They were skillful in stratagem, and seldom met an enemy in open fight. Ambush and secret attack were their favorite methods of gaining an advantage over an enemy. Their close personal encounters were fierce and bloody. They made prisoners, and tortured them, and the scalps of enemies were their trophies of war. Peace was arranged by sachems' in council; and each smoking the same "pipe of peace," called calumet,' was a solemn pledge of fidelity to the contract.

INDIAN WEAPONS.3

CALUMETS.

With the Indians, as with many oriental nations, women were regarded as inferior beings. They were degraded to the condition of abject slaves, and they never engaged with the men in their amusements of leaping, dancing, targetshooting, ball-playing, and games of chance. They were allowed as spectators, with their children, at war-dances around fires, when the men recited the feats of their ancestors and of themselves. Marriage, among them, was only a temporary contract—a sort of purchase-the father receiving presents from the

It was offensive to a chief or warrior to ask him his name, because it implied that his brave deeds were unknown. Red Jacket, the great Seneca chief (whose portrait is at the head of this chapter), was asked his name in court, in compliance with a legal form. He was very indignant, and replied, "Look at the papers which the white people keep the most carefully"-(land ces-ion treaties) they will tell you who I am." Red Jacket was born near Geneva, New York, about 1750, and died in 1830. He was the last great chief of the Senecas. For a biographical sketch of him, see Lossing's "Eminent Americans."

2 Knights-errant of Europe, six hundred years ago, were men clothed in metal armor, who went from country to country, to win fame by personal combats with other knights. They also engaged in wars. For about three hundred years, knights-errant and their exploits formed the chief amusement of the courts of Europe. It is curious to trace the connection of the spirit of knighthood, as exhibited by the one hundred and thirty-five orders that have existed, at various times, in the Old World, with some of the customs of the rude Aboriginals of North America

3 bow and arrow; b, a war club; c, an iron tomahawk; d, a stone one; e, a scalpingknife.

4 They seized an enemy by the hair, and by a skillful use of the knife, cut and tore from the top of the head a large portion of the skin.

Suchems were the civil heads of nations or tribes; chiefs were military leaders.

Tobacco was in general use among the Indians for smoking, when the white men came. The more filthy practice of chewing it was invented by the white people. The calumet was made of pipe-clay, and was often ornamented with feathers.

husband, in exchange for the daughter, who, generally, after being fondled and favored for a few months, was debased to the condition of a domestic servant, at best. The men had the right to take wives and dismiss them at pleasure; and, though polygamy was not very common, except among the chiefs, it was not objectionable. Every Indian might have as many wives as he could purchase and maintain. The husband might put his wife to death if she proved unfaithful to him. The affections were ruled by custom, and those decorous endearments and attentions toward woman, which give a charm to civilized society, were wholly unknown among the Indians; yet the sentiment of conjugal love was not always wanting, and attachments for life were frequent. There was no society to call for woman's refining qualities to give it beauty, for they had but few local attachments, except for the burial-places of their dead.

From the frozen North to the tropical South, their funeral ceremonies and methods of burial were similar. They laid their dead, wrapped in skins, upon sticks, in the bottom of a shallow pit, or placed them in a sitting posture, or occasionally folded them in skins, and laid them upon high scaffolds, out of the reach of wild beasts. Their arms, utensils, paints, and food, were buried with them, to be used on their long journey to the spirit-land. By this custom, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was clearly and forcibly taught, not as distinctively spiritual, but as Possessing the two-fold nature of matter and spirit. Over their graves they raised mounds, and planted beautiful wild-flowers upon them. The Algonquins, especially, always lighted the symbolical funeral pyre, for several nights, upon the grave, that the soul might perceive and enjoy the respect paid to the body. Relatives uttered piercing cries and great lamentations during the burial, and they continued mourning many days.

BURIAL-PLACE.

Like that of the earlier nations of the world, their religion was simple, withOut many ceremonies, and was universally embraced. They had no infidels. among them. The duality of God is the most ancient tenet of Indian faitha prominent tenet, it will be observed, in the belief of all of the more advanced Oriental nations of antiquity. They believed in the existence of two Great Spirits: the one eminently great was the Good Spirit,' and the inferior was an Evil one. They also deified the sun, moon, stars, meteors, fire, water, thunder, wind, and every thing which they held to be superior to themselves, but

1 They believed every animal to have had a great original, or father. The first buffalo, the first Dear, the first beaver, the first eagle, etc., was the Manitou of the whole race of the different creatures. They chose some one of these originals as their special Manitou, or guardian, and hence arose the custom of having the figure of some animal for the arms or symbol of a tribe, called totum. For example, each of the FIVE NATIONS (sce page 12) was divided into several tribes, designated The Wolf, The Bear, The Turtle, etc., and their respective totums were rude representations of these animals. When they signed treaties with the white people, they sometimes sketched outlines of their totums. The annexed cut represents the totum of Teyendagages, of the Turtle tribe of the Mohawk nation, as affixed by him to a deed. It would be a curious and pleasant task to trace the intimate connection of this totemic system with the use of symbolical signet-rings, and other seals of antiquity, and, by succession, the heraldic devices of modern times.

TOTUM.

they never exalted their heroes or prophets above the sphere of humanity. They also adored an invisible, great Master of life, in different forms, which they called Manitou, and made it a sort of tutelar deity. They had vague ideas of the doctrine of atonement for sins, and made propitiatory sacrifices with great solemnity. All of them had dim traditions of the creation, and of a great deluge which covered the earth. Each nation, as we have observed, had crude notions, drawn from tradition, of their own distinct origin, and all agreed that their ancestors came from the North.

It can hardly be said that the Indians had any true government. It was a mixture of the patriarchal and despotic. Public opinion and common usage were the only laws of the Indian.' All political power was vested in a sachem or chief, who was sometimes an hereditary monarch, but frequently owed his elevation to his own merits as a warrior or orator. While in power, he was absolute in the execution of enterprises, if the tribe confided in his wisdom. Public opinion, alone, sustained him. It elevated him, and it might depose him. The office of chief was often hereditary, and its duties were sometimes exercised even by women. Unlike the system of lineal descent which prevails in the Old World, the heir to the Indian throne of power was not the chief's own son, but the son of his sister. This usage was found to be universal throughout the continent. Yet the accident of birth was of little moment. If the recipient of the honor was not worthy of it, the title might remain, but the influence passed into other hands. This rule might be followed, with benefit, by civilized communities. Every measure of importance was matured in council, which was composed of the elders, with the sachem as umpire. His decision was final, and wherever he led, the whole tribe followed. The utmost decorum prevailed in the public assemblies, and a speaker was always listened to with respectful silence.

We have thus briefly sketched the general character of the inhabitants of the territory of the United States, when discovered by Europeans. Although inferior in intellectual cultivation and approaches to the arts of civilization, to the native inhabitants of Mexico and South America, and to a race which evidently occupied the continent before them, they possessed greater personal manliness and vigor than the more southern ones discovered by the Spaniards. They were almost all wanderers, and roamed over the vast solitudes of a fertile continent, free as the air, and unmindful of the wealth in the soil under their feet. The great garden of the western world needed tillers, and white men came. They have thoroughly changed the condition of the land and the people. The light of civilization has revealed, and industry has developed, vast treasures in the soil, while before its radiance the Aboriginals are rapidly melting like snow in the sunbeams. A few generations will pass, and no representative of the North American Indian will remain upon the earth.

1 It was said of McGillivray, the half-breed emperor of the Creeks, who died in 1793, that, notwithstanding he called himself "King of kings," and was idolized by his people, "he could neither restrain the meanest fellow of his nation from the commission of a crime, nor punish him after he had committed it. night persuade, or advise-all the good an Indian king or chief can do."

2 Page 43.

CHAPTER II.

THE ALGONQUINS.

THE first tribes of Indians, discovered by the French in Canada,' were inhabitants of the vicinity of Quebec, and the adventurers called them Montagners, or Mountain Indians, from a range of high hills westward of that city. Ascending the St. Lawrence, they found a numerous tribe on the Ottawa River, who spoke an entirely different dialect, if not a distinct language. These they called ALGONQUINS, and this name was afterward applied to that great collection of tribes north and south of Lakes Erie and Ontario, who spoke dialects of the same language. They inhabited the territory now included in all of Canada, New England, a part of New York and Pennsylvania, the States of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, eastern North Carolina above Cape Fear, a large portion of Kentucky and Tennessee, and all north and west of these States, eastward of the Mississippi.

The ALGONQUIN nation was composed of several powerful tribes, the most important of which were the Knisteneaux and Athapascas, in the far north, the Ottawas, Chippewas, Sacs and Foxes, Menomonees, Miamies, Piankeshaws, Pottowatomies, Kickapoos, Illinois, Shawnees, Powhatans, Corees, Nanticokes, Lenni-Lenapes, or Delawares, Mohegans, the New England Indians, and the Abenakes. There were smaller, independent tribes, the principal of which were the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania; the Mannahoacks, in the hill country between the York and Potomac Rivers, and the Monocans, on the head waters of the James River in Virginia. All of these tribes were divided into cantons or clans, sometimes so small as to afford only a war party of forty bowmen.

The KNISTENEAUX yet [1856] inhabit a domain extending across the continent from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, and are the hereditary ene mies of the ESQUIMAUX, their neighbors of the Polar Circle. The Athapascas inhabit a belt of country from Churchill's River and Hudson's Bay to within a hundred miles of the Pacific coast, and combine a large number of tribes who speak a similar language. They, too, are the enemies of the Esquimaux. The extensive domain occupied by these tribes and the Esquimaux, is claimed by the British, and is under the control of the Hudson's Bay Company. The orginal land of the OTTAWAS was on the west side of Lake Huron, but they were seated upon the river in Canada bearing their name, when the French discovered them. They claimed sovereignty over that region, and exacted tribute from those who passed to or from the domain of the Hurons. They assisted

Page 48.

2 Between the Ottawas and Hurons, was a tribe called Mississaguies, who appear to have left the ALGONQUINS, and joined the FIVE NATIONS, South of Lake Ontario.

still found in Canada.

Remnants of this tribe are

the latter in a war with the FIVE NATIONS' in 1650, and suffered much. The Hurons were almost destroyed, and the OTTAWAS were much reduced in numbers. Some of them, with the Huron remnant, joined the Chippewas, and, finally, the whole tribe returned to their ancient seat [1680] in the northern part of the Michigan peninsula. Under their great chief, Pontiac, they were confederated with several other ALGONQUIN tribes of the north-west, in an attempt to exterminate the white people, in 1763. Within a fortnight, in the summer of that year, they took possession of all the English garrisons and trading posts in the West, except Detroit, Niagara,3 and Fort Pitt. Peace was restored in 1764-5, the confederation was dissolved, and Pontiac took up his abode with the Illinois, where he was murdered. "This murder," "This murder," says Nicollet, "which roused the vengeance of all the Indian tribes friendly to Pontiac, brought about the successive wars, and almost extermination of the Illinois nation.' His broken nation sought refuge with the French, and their descendants may yet [1856] be found in Canada.

Those two once powerful tribes, the CHIPPEWAS and POTTAWATOMIES, were closely allied by language and friendship. The former were on the southern shores of Lake Superior; the latter occupied the islands and main land on the western shores of Green Bay, when first discovered by the French in 1761. They afterward seated themselves on the southern shore of Lake Michigan [1701], where they remained until removed, by treaty, to lands upon the Little Osage River, westward of Missouri. They are now [1856] the most numerous of all the remnants of the ALGONQUIN tribes. The Chippewas and the Sioux, west of the Mississippi, are their deadly enemies.

The Sacs and Foxes are really one tribe. They were first discovered by the French at the southern extremity of Green Bay, in 1680. In 1712 the French garrison of twenty men at Detroit," was attacked by the Foxes. The French repulsed them, with the aid of the Ottawas, and almost destroyed the assailants. They joined the Kickapoos in 1722, in driving the Illinois from their lands on the river of that name. The Illinois took refuge with the French, and the Kickapoos remained on their lands until 1819, when they went to the west bank of the Missouri in the vicinity of Fort Leavenworth. The Sacs and Foxes sold their lands to the United States in 1830. Black Hawk, a Sac chief, who, with his people, joined the English in our second war with Great Britain, demurred, and commenced hostilities in 1832. The Indians were defeated, and Black Hawk,' with many of his warriors, were made prisoners.

BLACK HAWK.

Among the very few Indian tribes who have remained upon their ancient

23.

3 Page 200.

1 Chapter III., 2 Page 205. 4 Page 198. 5 He was buried on the site of the city of St. Louis, in Missouri. "Neither mound nor tablet," says Parkman, "marked the burial-place of Pontiac. For a mausoleum, a city has risen above the forest hero, and the race whom he hated with such burning rancor, trample with unceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave."

6 Page 180.

7 Page 409.

Page 463.

9 This picture is from a plaster-cast of the face of Black Hawk, taken when he was a prisoner in New York, in 1832. See page 463.