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tribe, from the most reliable authority I can get, numbers fully 350 lodges. They live entirely in the British possessions, and never come this way except to trade, get their annuities, or commit some depredation, such as pilfering from emigrant trains, stealing horses, or fighting with other tribes, and then run back to their northern home with their booty, defying pursuit. They were indignant because their annuities were so small; and on leaving showed their resentment by killing and leaving on the prairie, some four miles from Fort Benton, an ox and a cow that were quietly grazing as they passed. I look upon this tribe as being one of the worst in or near the agency; would recommend that their next annuity be paid them in powder and ball from the mouth of a six-pounder, and that they be turned over to the tender mercies of the British Crown, whose subjects they undoubtedly are."

The Crows, Omahas, Ottoes, Pawnees, &c., are the names of the other prairie tribes; but there are numerous smaller ones. The Pawnees (see frontispiece) were and are yet far from the most agreeable neighbours. Among them linger still, more so than among most of the tribes in their neighbourhood (Great Platte River), some of the belongings of the Indians in times before the whites had come amongst them. The months they still designate by quaint names; for instance, March is "the warm moon;" April, "the plant moon;" May, "the flower moon;" August, "the sturgeon moon;" September, "the corn moon;" October, "the travelling moon;" November, "the beaver moon;" December, "the hunting moon;" January, "the cold moon;" or, in reference to its phases, the "dead moon," "live moon." As among nearly all Indian tribes, days are counted by "sleeps" or "suns," and years by "snow." The Crows are about the most arrant rascals in the country. No trader trusts them, and they bear the reputation of never doing an honourable act-or, rather, avoiding the chance of doing a dishonourable one-or of keeping a promise. They winter about the upper waters of the Platte and Yellowstone. Hunting, robbery, and murder are their chief employments.

CHAPTER VIII.

INDIANS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES.

WHEN the Europeans first arrived in America, they found in the region now divided into the comparatively thickly-populated Atlantic States and Canada proper a large aboriginal population, in a savage condition it is true, but in character vastly superior to that of any of the tribes we have yet described, unless the Pueblo Indians be taken as an exception. They lived in stationary villages, and cultivated maize and tobacco, and though cruel and relentless in war, they were yet capable of many generous acts. In physique they were also fine, and until recently were taken as the types of their whole race. With a few exceptions, all these tribes have been removed-sometimes peaceably, but more often after much bloodshedfrom their old homes and located beyond the Mississippi, on what is called the Indian Territory, certain annuities being paid to them by the United States Government as compensation for the loss of their former lands. Some of the tribes, by war and pestilence, have become

entirely extinct; all of them are, more or less, civilised, and in some cases white blood preponderates over the red in their veins: a few of them are in their pristine condition. Some of the leading American statesmen have aboriginal American blood in their veins, and several gentlemen filling respectable positions at the bar and elsewhere are of pure or mixed Indian blood. Among the extinct British peerages is one conferred by Queen Elizabeth on Roanok, chief of a portion of Virginia, whose daughter, Pocahontas-La Belle Saurage-was married to John Rolf, and visited England, and whose name has been handed down to posterity in the name of the locality from which these pages are issued. Her descendants, the "Pocahontas Randolphs," are the aristocracy of Virginia. The late Governor Randolph had, even after the long lapse of more than two and a half centuries, the marked Indian features and caste of countenance, so persistent are the characteristics inherited with aboriginal blood over the finer but less tenacious vitality of the mixed European races.

Most of these tribes belonged to the great Athabascan, Alongonkin, and Iroquois families. Some of the Mississippi tribes, Latham considers, are not allied to what he calls the Paducas, among which nearly all the north-western Indians are placed, but are more referable to the Mexican race. The Natchez on the Mississippi, for instance, practised human sacrifice on the death of their chief. They worshipped the sun, and, like most barbarous or savage people in modern times, and among the Romans formerly, kept a sacred fire continually burning. They had a caste system connected with their religion, the principal chief being called the great sun, and his children suns; while that portion of the tribe not supposed to be descended from their solar dignitaries had no civil power. Rank was transmitted through the females, and so on. The Attacapacas, another tribe bordering the Mississippi, differed so far from the rest of the race as for their language to yet remain in its monosyllabic condition, not having yet become "agglutinate" like the rest of the American tongues.

It would be beyond the province of a work like the present to follow ethnologists into an inquiry regarding the philological connection, distribution, and origin of these tribes, though much could be said on this subject. A few words about the chief of the Eastern State tribes now removed beyond the Mississippi, and about the Canadian ones, still to some extent living in their former homes, or in "reserves," will suffice.

DELAWARES.

This tribe we have already mentioned. None has been so celebrated in song and story; it has been the stock subject of border romances. At one time the Delawares occupied a great portion of Eastern Pennsylvania and the States of New Jersey and Delaware, but no tribe has been so much jostled about by the progress of civilisation. First a paternal government moved them from the banks of the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and to the base of and over the Alleghany Mountains to the Ohio River; then to the Illinois and the Mississippi, and now the handful which remains are located on lands to the west of the Missouri, guaranteed to them and their descendants in fee simple for ever—the phrase only meaning, as it has been proved to mean over and over again, until their lands become sufficiently valuable to tempt the white settlement. Every foot breadth of this western retreat they have keenly and bitterly fought, and a tribe which once numbered 15,000 does not now count half as many hundred souls on its census roll.

Their "war-path" and hunting parties are seen far and near, even to the shores of the Pacific; the Delawares are irreclaimable in their determined vagabondism. They have been

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known to visit tribes 2,000 miles from their home, be feasted by them, and in their turn cajole them, and yet not bid farewell without bringing off as tokens of remembrance a few scalps; then they would go to another tribe and repeat the transaction, and yet would manage to fight their way home again out of the enemy's country.

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