with the manners, customs, character, and disposition of those men of nature, when uncorrupted by European vices. Of these I think I could

draw a highly interesting picture, if I only possessed adequate powers of description; but the talent of writing is not to be acquired in the wilderness among savages. I have felt it, however, to be a duty incumbent upon me to make the attempt, and I have done it in the following pages with a rude but faithful pencil. I have spent great part of my life among those people, and have been treated by them with uniform kindness and hospitality. I have witnessed their virtues, and experienced their goodness. I owe them a debt of gratitude which I cannot acquit better than by presenting to the world this plain unadorned picture, which I have drawn in the spirit of candour and truth."*

Of the numerous writers who have explored the interior of North America, there is none whose description of the Indians is more worthy of perusal than what has been given by Captain Carver. That celebrated traveller did not indeed reside in the Indian country so long as many others who have published accounts of the native tribes, but

* Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations. (Introduction, p. 24.) Published in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, by the Rev. John Heckewelder. (1819.)

none observed them with a more skilful eye; and besides, he has given us the interesting description of nations who had never before been visited by: any European. In describing some of these,- then. powerful and populous tribes, he admits that they were cruel, barbarous, and revengeful; persevering and inflexible in their pursuit of an enemy; sangui-, nary in their treatment of prisoners; and in their wars sparing neither age nor sex. On the other hand, he found them temperate in their mode of living, patient of hunger and fatigue, sociable and humane to those whom they looked upon as friends, and ready to share with them the last morsel of food they possessed, or to expose their lives in their defence. In their public character, he describes them as possessing an attachment to their nation unknown to the inhabitants

of any other country, combining, as if actuated by one soul, against their common enemy; never swayed in their councils by selfish or party views, but sacrificing every thing to the honour and advan-. tage of their tribe, in support of which they fear no danger, and are affected by no sufferings.

"In contradiction," says Carver, "to the report of many other travellers, I can assert that, notwithstanding the apparent indifference with which an Indian, after a long absence, meets his wife and children— an indifference proceeding rather from custom than insensibility—he is not unmindful of

the claims either of connubial or parental tenderness. The little story I have introduced in the preceding chapter of the Naudowessie woman lamenting her child, and the immature death of the father, will elucidate this point, and enforce the assertion much better than the most studied arguments I can make use of."

The following is the story to which he alludes, and in which he adverts to the custom among the Naudowessie (or Scioux) Indians, of maiming and wounding themselves while mourning for their deceased friends and relations.*

"Whilst I remained among them, a couple, whose tent was adjacent to mine, lost a son of about four years of age. The parents were so much affected at the death of their child, that they pursued the usual testimonies of grief with such uncommon rigour, as, through the weight of sorrow, and loss of blood, to occasion the death of the father. The woman, who had been hitherto inconsolable, no sooner saw her husband

* A similar practice is noticed by Bradbury, as prevailing among the Ricaras. Travels in America, p. 95. Sir Alexander Mackenzie observed the same custom among the Beaver Indians. Voyages in North America, p. 148. Lewis and Clarke notice it also as now existing among the Mandans.- Travels up the Missouri, chap. 4. And a similar account respecting the Kanzas is to be found in James's late Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, chap. 6.

expire, than she dried up her tears, and appeared cheerful and resigned. As I knew not how to account for so extraordinary a transition, I took an opportunity to ask her the reason of it; telling her, at the same time, that I should have imagined the loss of her husband would rather have occasioned an increase of grief than such a sudden diminution of it.

"She informed me, that as the child was so young when it died, and unable to support itself in the Country of Spirits, both she and her husband had been apprehensive that its situation would be far from happy; but no sooner did she behold its father depart for the same place, who not only loved the child with the tenderest affection, but was a good hunter, and would be able to provide plentifully for its support, than she ceased to mourn. She added, that she now saw no reason to continue her tears, as the child, on whom she doted, was happy under the care and protection of a fond father; and she had only one wish that remained ungratified, which was that of being herself with them.

"Expressions so replete with unaffected tenderness, and sentiments that would have done honour to a Roman matron, made an impression on my mind greatly in favour of the people to whom she belonged; and tended not a little to counteract

:

the prejudices I had hitherto entertained, in common with every other traveller, of Indian insensibility, and want of parental tenderness.

"Her subsequent conduct confirmed the favourable opinion I had just imbibed, and convinced me that, notwithstanding this apparent suspension of her grief, some particles of that reluctance to be separated from a beloved relation, which is implanted either by nature or custom in every human heart, still lurked in hers. I observed that she went almost every evening to the foot of the tree, on a branch of which the bodies of her husband and child were laid, and, after cutting off a lock of her hair and throwing it on the ground, in a plaintive melancholy song bemoaned its fate. A recapitulation of the actions he might have performed, had his life been spared, appeared to be her favourite theme; and whilst she foretold the fame that would have attended an imitation of his father's virtues, her grief seemed to be suspended.

Le Clercq, the French missionary whose work has been already referred to, also records an instance of natural affection which he witnessed among a band of Indians, resembling, in some measure, the anecdote mentioned by Carver, as above nar

* Carver's Travels through the Interior of North America, chap. 15.

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