times they are carried away to Indian villages. There, they are either adopted into families and treated with the utmost kindness; or at other times they are made to undergo the most dreadful tortures and a lingering death. Sometimes they are sold as slaves, or suffered to be redeemed by their friends and countrymen for a sum of money.

Their mode of torturing those, whom the fortune of war has thrown into their power, especially when they wage war with each other, is dreadful. They erect a scaffold, tie the prisoners to a stake, when the sufferers commence their death song. They recount how many of their enemies they have killed, and triumph in the idea of the destruction which they have heretofore occasioned among them. They ridicule them as being ignorant of the art of tormenting, and instruct them in new modes of it. Tortures begin at the extremities of the body. The nails are torn out by the roots. The skin of the fingers is torn off with the teeth. Fine splinters of pine are stuck into the roots of the nails and set on fire. The toes are pounded between two stones. Circles are cut in rings round the joints. Gashes are made in the body. The flesh is pinched and seared. It is then pulled off in little pieces. The blood is rubbed in the faces. The bare nerves and tendons are twisted round red hot irons; and then extended in all directions. This scene continues during five or six hours. Sometimes the sufferer is allowed to rest, while new and worse tortures are preparing for him. Then, the eyes are thrust out; the ears and lips cut off; the teeth are knocked out; the skin is peeled off, hot embers are put on, and other distresses multiplied, so long as nature can sustain such barbarities.

When Indians thus suffer, they show great contempt of torture and death. Before they are led to execution, they sing and boast. Sometimes, they ask the favor of a piece of tobacco, or a few whiffs from a pipe. Nanunttenoo, son of Miantonimoh, when told by the English that he must suffer death, on account of the murders he had committed, replied, that "he liked it well; that he should die before his heart was soft; or he had said or done anything unworthy of himself."

Their sachems are the conductors of war, but their authority does not extend to civil affairs. Their great councils, or grand fires, are composed of the chiefs of tribes and heads of families, men of great wisdom; age and influence. They de

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bate with much decency, and great eloquence, and never are interrupted, till they close what they choose to offer. They enter on war with great deliberation and with many ceremonies. Their councils are held round a large fire; one of the chieftains presides; and scalps, as trophies of former valor and victories, are often hung around as the most valued ornaments of the senate house.

The Indians are fond of songs, although they have neither variety nor harmony in them. The thoughts turn on the most serious concerns of life. They have songs for war, for victory and for death. On themselves, these produce effects great and important.

Dancing is a favorite employment among them; and indeed is one, of which all nations, whether savage or civilized, are very fond. It prevails, however, with great diversity, and for very different purposes A refined people regard it as a mere amusement, but whose motions are without meaning, and in which both sexes unite. But among savages, dancing is something more than mere amusement. The women very seldom join in it; and refinement of manners is not an object in view. The wardance is a sort of theatrical representation, in which the dancers or actors exhibit the hatred they feel for the enemy, the secrecy with which they mean to fall upon him, and the cruelties which they intend to inflict. In being present, the imagination has an instant conception of its being a reality, and before the spectator can get rid of the delusions of fancy, he witnesses the wretched prisoners scalped, he sees the knife red with blood, and the tomahawk lifted up for the fatal blow. If peace is to be made, a dance is an essential ceremony; and they find means by motions of the body to express the most friendly sentiments of the heart. The ambassadors and the warriors unite in the same dance, and smoke from the same pipe of peace. The dance, in short, begins and concludes most of their important meetings and becomes a ceremony on all the most solemn and interesting occasions of life. Nor is the serious use of dancing peculiar to this people; the ancient Jews made it a part of religious homage, and this ceremony has had the good fortune to be admired into the worship of some christian sects.

Women among the Indians do not obtain a proper rank and merited estimation; but are treated as inferior beings. They are not permitted to eat with their husbands. The drudgery of the whole family falls on them. They build the

houses, and carry the heavy burdens on their journies. They plant, hoe and harvest the corn; bring home fish and game; and dress the food. The men hunt, take fish and go to war. The women are modest, and the men are strangers to the passions of jealousy. Their courtship are gross almost beyond example in some tribes. They cohabit, for a time, on trial, before marriage. If the man is not suited, he leaves the presents he has made the girl, and both seek new lovers. Women, however, are sometimes in high repute even in their councils both in peace and war, and are elected squaw sachems of their tribes. But it is only in civilized society that woman is respected, and approached with sentiments worthy of her virtues.

In general, an Indian family consists of one man and one woman with their children. Polygamy, however, is found to exist among them, where the means of subsistence are easy. To dissolve the connubial bond, nothing is necessary, but the consent of the parties. There is no evidence of cause, no record, no ceremony. If they have children, they are divided among the parents as they can agree.

In New-England the consent of the king was requisite for marriage, and he acted as a priest to join their hands in lasting union.

The Missouri tribe of Indians, like the ancient Israelites, marry the sister in succession, in case of the decease of the elder sister.

They usually make great lamentations for the dead, and refuse all consolation. The Showanese and some other tribes makes a feast, and rejoice when they deem their friends beyond the power of suffering. For 24 hours, they keep the corpse in the "cabin of death;" then it is placed in a bark coffin, and, followed by dancers, is consigned to the grave amidst the songs of the living. Hunting instruments, food and arms are buried with their friends, in order that they may appear to advantage in " the land of spirits."

Various customs and manner, however, prevail in the several tribes with very observable degrees of difference. Whatever relates to this singular people deserves more attention from naturalists and philosophers, civilians and theologians than they have yet given to the subject.

CHAPTER XXIV.

State of improvement among the Indians. Intellectual capacity. Without public instruction. No alphabet invented. No means of general knowledge. Ignorance. Agriculture. Attention confined to the means of subsistence. Imitative arts. Natural knowledge. Magic. Power over venomous serpents. Inclined to superstition. Natural tendency to this view. Language. Eloquence. An Indian speech.

As little improvement only as would allow society to exist had been made by the Aborigines of this country. They had made no progress in the arts or in the sciences, worthy of the name of either. Imperious necessity had compelled them indeed to contrive a few simple instruments which aided their means of subsistence at home, and a few weapons of defence which secured them against the power of enemies abroad. Imagination can hardly conceive of a people more destitute of whatsoever the enlightened parts of the world would deem necessary to society and comfort,

This ignorance was not the result of any intellectual and constitutional defect. The minds of the Indians afford uo evidence of want of vigor and discernment. They possess a degree of cunning, which is exceeded by no people on earth. The armies of enlightened nations have been made unwilling witnesses of their military prowess. Vigor of imagina tion is apparent in the beauty and strength of their figurative expressions.

Several of the natives, since their acquaintance with the white people, have been sent to the American colleges in order to acquire a classical education. After completing a regular course of studies, although the love of country and the ties of kindred have led them back to their native soil and the pleasant scenes where infancy sported, yet the facility with which they learned languages, traced the abstrusities of sciences and advanced in learned researches, sufficiently manifested no want of intellectual capacity. Their return home, however, where the means of information do not ex

ist, and where there is nothing to awaken the spirit of inquiry and rivalship, has unhappily put an end to their further improvement.

The Indians had no such institutions as schools, where the young are taught, and which among the civilized are the grand sources of general instructions. They had, like all other people, invented arbitrary signs of ideas; but to invent signs of words was an ingenious thought which had never entered their rude minds. In the eastern world, this invention is so ancient, that the name of its author, who ought to have been immortal in the honors and gratitude of all posterity, has been consigned to oblivion. We only know the honored names of those who have added a few more letters to the alphabets of the ancient oriental languages. There is no probability, that the natives of North America had made any real improvement for ages, prior to the discovery of this continent. There was nothing of that general information in existence among them, which would have soon led to the invention of letters. In the more polished kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, the state of improvement was more promising. They had invented a mode of expressing their thoughts by signs of words making use of strings of various colors, arranged in a peculiar manner. Hieroglyphic representations and historical paintings were efforts to accomplish a similar design. These inventions showed, that not many years would have elapsed before they would, with such a degree of information, have invented letters and the all important arts of writing and printing, tendencies to which were already apparent in the attainments, which they had actually made.

The Indians then were entirely unacquainted with the art of writing and the ingenious invention of an alphabet. They had no writing, no record, no regular history. What knowledge one age or nation possessed, they had no means of perpetuating for the benefit of another. Important discoveries, new inventions and the labors of genius perished with their authors. Each generation stood alone, and there was neither ability nor inclination to do much to enlighten and benefit posterity. Future generations seemed destined to remain in the same darkness and destitution. Mothers taught their children a few things, and the aged at times recounted the events of other days. Their songs were records of a few particulars, and the delivery of strings of wampum to individuals made it their special duty to remember the terms of national