sign. If in your secret minds ye still study vengeance, it is only mockery that ye enact, and there shall be no smoke ascending."

Having uttered these words, Gard was suddenly wrapped in a thick cloud of smoke, and the cloud floated up into the Land of Spirits.

States Mr. Powers:

The Hupâ Indians celebrate the Dance of Peace which Gard authorized. For twenty years it remained in abeyance because of their numerous wars, but in the spring of 1871 the old chiefs revived it, lest the younger ones should forget the ceremony. The dance was performed as follows: First they construct a semicircular wooden railing or row of palisades, inside of which the performers take their stations. The dancers consist of two maidens, who seem to be priestesses, and about twenty-five men, all of them arrayed in their gayest apparel, the maidens in fur garments, with strings of glittering shells around their necks and suspended in various ways from their shoulders; the men in tasselled deer-skin robes, and broad coronets or head-bands of the same material, spangled with the scarlet scalps of woodpeckers. A fire is built on the ground in the centre of the semicircle, and the men and maids then take their places, confronted by two, three, or sometimes four or five hundred spectators, and begin a slow and solemn chant in that weird monotone peculiar to the Indians, in which all the performers join.

The exercise is not properly a dance, but rather resembles the strange manœuvres of the Howling Dervishes of Turkey. They stretch out their arms and brandish them in the air; they sway their bodies backward and forward; they drop suddenly almost into a squatting posture, then quickly rise again; and at a certain turn of the ceremony all the men drop every article of clothing, and stand before the audience

perfectly nude. The maidens however conduct themselves with modesty throughout All this time the chant croons on in a solemn monotony, alternating with brief intervals of profound silence.

By all these multiplied and rapid genuflexions, remarks Mr. Powers, and this strange, infectious chanting, they gradually work themselves into a frenzy, almost equalling that of the dervishes, though they generally keep their places. This continues about two hours, and is renewed day by day, until the smoke is seen to curl up the hillside on which Gard had revealed himself to his brother, and where is stationed an aged man to keep vigil until it appeared.

It is related that the Karok Indians have a custom of whispering messages in the ear of the dead, which indicates their assurance of immortality. Groups of mourners were seen by Mr. Powers, standing beneath the sky of night, pointing out to one another imaginary Spirit Roads, klesh yem'-mel, among the stars. There is a word among the Indians of this tribe (the Wintun), which is the name of the Almighty, according to Mr. Powers. It is Noam-kles-to'-wa (Great Spirit of the West). The Shastika Indians1 speak of a Great Man Above, whom they call Yu-ma-chuh. Luyeh is Maidu Indian for All. States Mr. Powers:

There is no doubt that they believe [the Pomo Indians] in a Supreme Being, but, as usual among California Indians, he is quite a negative being, possessing few, if any, active attri

In 1874, says Mr. Powers, Hon. J. R. Luttrell asserted in Congress that fifteen annual appropriations had been made for this tribe, of which they never had received a dollar, the Indian agents having appropriated the money to themselves.

butes. His name is Cha-kal-lé. The syllable cha denotes Man (though the usual word meaning an ordinary mortal is atabuny), and kallé signifies Above, being apparently from the same root as kalleh in the Gallinomero language.

This distinction of terms, between that for an ordinary mortal and for the Great Man, denotes some change or added meaning. The following passage in the Maidu Indians' legend of the Flood denotes a conception of the Supreme Being, in the sense of a Spirit, perhaps similar to that of the Wintun Indians :

At the end of nine sleeps he was changed [the chief]. He was no more like himself before, for now no arrow could wound him. Though a thousand Indians should shoot at him, not one flint-pointed arrow would pierce his skin. He was like the Great Man in Heaven, for no man could slay him forevermore.

Lightning, states the Maidu Indian, is the Great Man himself, descending swiftly out of heaven, and rending the trees with his flaming arm. Heaven, remarks another, is just behind the sun. Thus we find a belief in the "principle of fire," to use the expression of Josephus, as the vehicle of the Supreme Spirit.

The Kelta Indians make a curious and a rather subtle metaphysical distinction in the matter of spirits. According to them, there is an evil spirit, or devil, Kitoanchwa (a Hupâ word), and a good spirit. But the good spirit is nameless. The evil spirit is positive, active, and powerful; but the good spirit is negative and passive. The former is without, and ranges through space on evil errands bent; but the latter is within men; it is their own spirit, their better nature,

or conscience. Like Confucius, who calls conscience the Good Heart, they seem to believe that the original nature of man is good, and that he does evil only under temptation from the bad spirit, without or external to himself.

The California Indians have this saying:

When the Kelta dies, a little bird flies with his soul to the spirit-land. If he was a bad Indian, a hawk will catch the little bird and eat him up, soul and feathers; but if he was good, he will reach the spirit-land.

The Kanipek Indians are singular in their devotion to the custom of incineration. Two Indians were once drowned in the lake near Kelsey, and their relations searched for them assiduously for weeks, that they might reduce their bodies to ashes, without which it was believed they would never behold the Happy Western Land. A lady described to Mr. Powers a scene of cremation which she once witnessed, and instead of the revolting exhibitions seen among some tribes, it was conducted with seemly and mournful tenderness. The body was carefully wrapped in blankets, laid upon the pyre, and the torch applied; and as the flames advanced, fresh blankets were continually thrown over the body to conceal its loathsomeness from sight until it was consumed. A woman, one of the chief mourners, sat at the head, with her eyes upturned to heaven, chanting,' mourning, and weeping. The mother, bowed down and broken with grief, with close-cropped head, and face disfigured with the blackest pitch, as the emblem of mourning, sat at the foot, lamenting and lacerating her face until she was exhausted. She then rose, tottered away, and fell at the feet of her husband, who encircled

her with his arm, and tenderly stroked down her hair while he mingled his tears with hers.

An Indian counts it no unmanliness to weep for his friends.

He believes that the soul can be disembodied and set free only by fire. An aged woman is seen sometimes to wear for months the grass rope which she has manufactured for her burial wrapping. An old man, on the verge of death from extreme age, made a gravepit, and for many weeks took his repast beside it, contemplating with serene philosophy that change from which it has been thought the natural mind revolts.

It is the desire of the Shastika Indian, as well as most California Indians, to be buried where he is born; and in accordance with this wish, at his death in a foreign land his body is burned, and the ashes carried to the place of his nativity. Were this not done, it is believed that his body would not go back to where it originated, and body and soul would wander around, an unlaid manes.

The Karok Indians inter their dead close beside their cabins, in order that they may religiously watch and protect them from peering intrusion, and ensure them tranquil rest in the grave. How well and truly the Karok reverence the memory of the dead is shown by the fact that the highest crime one can commit is the pet-chi-é-ri, the mere mention of the dead relative's name. It is a deadly insult to the survivors, and can be atoned for only by the same amount of blood-money as is paid for wilful murder. In default of that they will have the villain's blood. They do not like strangers to even inspect the burial-place. "When," further states Mr. Powers, "I was leaning over the pickets,