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by the accusation: "The red man knew nothing of trouble until it came from the white man; as soon as he crossed the great waters he wanted our country, and in return has always been ready to teach us to quarrel about his religion. Red Jacket can never be a friend to such men. We are few and weak, but may for a long time be happy, if we hold to our country and the religion of our fathers." And the chief's dying request was: "Let my funeral be according to the customs of our nation. Let me be dressed and equipped as my fathers were, that their spirits may rejoice at my coming. Be sure that my grave be not made by a white man; let him not pursue me there!"

This request was disregarded; for the neighboring missionaries took possession of his body, and conveyed it to their meeting-house, where a service was performed; after which, permission was given the friends of the chief to say anything which they wished in relation to the departed, but this offer received the brief reply, accompanied by a look of scorn: "This house was built for the white man; the friends of Red Jacket cannot be heard in it."

Now when Philip's attention was sought by Mr. Eliot, the sachem, taking hold of a button on the good man's coat, said energetically, "I care no more for your religion than for that button." Mr. Mayhew requested Ninigret, chief of the Narragansetts, liberty to preach to his people; but the chief bade him "go and make the English good," and added that so long as the English could not agree themselves what religion was, it ill became them to teach others.

M'Kenny, in his History of the Indian Tribes, tells

us:

It has been a favorite project of the Roman Catholic missionaries, to rear a native priesthood among the American Indians, and they have taken great pains to induce some of their converts to be educated for the holy office. It seems strange that so rational a project, and one which would appear to promise the most beneficial results, should have entirely failed, especially when undertaken by a church of such ample means and persevering spirit; yet it is a fact, that not a single individual of this race in North America, among the many who have been educated, and the still larger number who have been converted to Christianity, has ever become a minister of the gospel.

The Indian's mode of dealing with crime was summary. A murderer when detected, by an ancient custom, was at once killed and buried with the body of his victims. It is related that two brothers came to strife, and one was killed. The savages without hesitation despatched the survivor, and their bodies were consigned to the same grave.1 Falsification and treachery were the usual causes of all the Indian's internecine wars. son given for enmity of tribes or clans was that they were unfaithful to the Indian code of tribal relations. The fierce justice of the savage required of a tribe restitution for wrong, either by death of the victim, or presents that should be as oil to the wound.

The rea

The government at Boston, in 1675, and later, during the Revolutionary War, struggling for life and territorial possessions, did not occupy itself in a too careful guard of the rights and wrongs of the natives; nor did its promises always hold good. They came and dwelt in the country, bringing their wives and children; they displayed their mode of worship, cultivated the soil,

1 Tanner.

framed their laws, but they did not "take the Indian children as their own." Instead, they took their inheritance. It may not then be accounted strange that our savages did not become Christian priests, even with the fair example of a few heroic men. But had there been

no wrong, it is asserted, the barbarians would have been unreclaimable. Fifty-three years nevertheless, history relates, under the government of William Penn, the colonists of Pennsylvania lived in amity and concord with the Indians. They went on tilling the soil, it is recorded, without molestation. All territorial purchases were made in accordance with Indian custom and compact in council. The story of Penn's integrity and the Indian's faithfulness is a pleasant chapter in the annals of the early colonists. As an illustration of this wise man's rule, the following enactments are selected from a document termed "Laws Agreed Upon:"

V. That all courts shall be open, and justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.

VI. That in all courts, all persons of all persuasions may freely appear in their own way and according to their own manner, and there personally plead their own cause themselves; or, if unable, a friend: and the first process be the exhibition of the complaint in court fourteen days before the trial; and that the party complained against may be fitted for the same, he or she shall be summoned no less than ten days before, and a copy of the complaint delivered him or her at his or her dwelling-house. But before the complaint of any person be received, he shall solemnly declare in court that he believes in his conscience his cause is just.

XII. And forasmuch as it is usual with the planters to overreach the poor natives of the country in trade, by goods

not being good of the kind, or debased with mixtures, with which they are sensibly aggrieved, it is agreed, whatever is sold to the Indians, in consideration of their furs, shall be sold in the market-place, and there suffer the test, whether good or bad; if good, to pass; if not good, not to be sold for good, that the natives may not be abused nor provoked.

XIII. That no man shall by any ways or means, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian, but he shall incur the same penalty of law as if he had committed it against his fellow-planter; and if any Indian shall abuse, in word or deed, any planter of this province, that he shall not be his own judge upon the Indian, but he shall make his complaint to the governor of the province, or his lieutenant or deputy, or some inferior magistrate near him, who shall to the utmost of his power take care, with the King of the Indian, that all reasonable satisfaction be made to the said injured planter.

XIV. That all differences between the planters and the natives shall also be ended by twelve men, that is, by six planters and six natives, that so we may live friendly together as much as in us lieth, preventing all occasions of heart-burnings and mischief.

XXXV. That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no ways be molested or prejudiced in matters of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever.

Remarks Mr. Powers,1 in his statement of general facts regarding the California Indians:

1 Mr. Powers "travelled," he states in a private letter to Mr. Powell, "ycars in California, penetrated the remotest valleys, and

They certainly were not a martial race, as is shown by the almost total absence of the shield, and the extreme paucity of their warlike weapons, which consisted only of bows and arrows, very rude spears, slings, and stones and clubs picked up on the battle-field. It is unjust to them to compare their war-record with that of the Algonkins. Let it not be forgotten that these latter tribes gained their reputation for valor, such as it is, through two long and bloody centuries, wherein they contended, almost always in superior force, with weak border settlements, hampered with families, and enfeebled by the malarial fevers which always beset new openings in the forest. Let it be remembered, on the other hand, that after the Republic had matured its vast strength and developed its magnificent resources, it poured out hither a hundred thousand of the picked young men of the nation, — unencumbered with women and children, armed with the deadliest steel weapons of modern invention, and animated with that fierce energy which the boundless lust for gold inspired in the Americans, and pitted them against a race reared in an indolent climate, and in a land where there was scarcely wood enough for weapons. They were, one might almost say, burst into the air by the suddenness and the fierceness of the onslaught. Never before in history has a people been swept away with such terrible swiftness, or appalled into utter unwhispering silence forever and forever, as were the California Indians by those hundred thousand of the best blood of the nation. They were struck dumb; they crouched in terror talked with scores of trustworthy men, men like General Bidwell, Judge Steele, Representative Fairchild, and others, — who had been among the Indians ten, twenty, thirty years, and seen them in their prime. These men gave me solid facts respecting their own limited area."

From Mr. Powers's valuable Contribution to American Ethnology, in the work "California Tribes," these relations are given, that a more complete understanding of the characteristics of our southern tribes may be had.