* * *

"Certain murders were committed at Prairie [sary arrangements for defence, and security, du Chien on the Upper Mississippi, in 1827, &c., idly, but anxiously, awaiting his arrival, by a party of Indians, headed by the famous when, at about one o'clock to-day, we descried, Winnebago chief, Red Bird. Measures were coming in the direction of the encampment, taken to capture the offenders, and secure the and across the portage, a body of Indians, peace of the frontier. Information some mounted, and some on foot. They were of these movements was given to the Indians.first, when discovered, on a mound, and deat a council then holding at the Butte des scending it, and by the aid of a glass we could Morts, on Fox River, and of the determina-discern three flags, two appeared to be Amertion of the United States' government to pun-ican, and one white; * * * * and in half ish those who had shed the blood of our people an hour they were near the river, and at the at Prairie du Chien. The Indians were faith-crossing place, when we heard singing; it was fully warned of the impending danger, and announced by those who knew the notes, to be told, that if the murderers were not surrender- a death-song, when presently the river being ed, war would be carried in among them, and only about a hundred yards across, and the Ina way cut through their country, not with axes, dians approaching it, those who knew him but guns. They were advised to procure a said, 'It is the Red Bird singing his deathsurrender of the guilty persons, and, by so song. On the moment of their arriving at the doing, save the innocent from suffering. Run-landing, two scalp-yells were given, and these ners were dispatched, bearing the intelligence were also by the Red-Bird. The Menominies of this information among their bands. Our who had accompanied us were lying, in Indian troops were put in motion. The Indians saw, fashion, in different directions all over the hill, in the movement of these troops, the storm eyeing, with a careless indifference, this scene; that was hanging over them. On arriving at but the moment the yells were given, they the portage, distant about one hundred and bounded from the ground, as if they had been forty miles from the Butte des Morts, we found shot out of it, and running in every direction, ourselves within nine miles of a village, at each to his gun, seized it, and throwing back which, we were informed, were two of the mur- the pan, picked the touch-hole, and rallied. derers, Red Bird, the principal, and We-kaw, They knew well that the yells were scalptogether with a large party of warriors. The yells, but they did not know whether they inIndians, apprehending an attack, sent a mes-dicated two to be taken, or two to be given, but senger to our encampment. He arrived, and seated himself at our tent door. On inquiring what he wanted, he answered, 'Do not strike. When the sun gets up there' (pointing to a certain part of the heavens) 'they will come in.' To the question who will come in?' he answered, Red Bird and We-kaw.' Having thus delivered his message, he rose, wrapped his blanket about him, and returned. This was about noon. At three o'clock another Indian came, seated himself in the same place, and being questioned, gave the same answer. At sun-down, another came, and repeated what the others had said."

of

a

We must proceed with this romance savage life, as told by Mr. McKenney, in private letter to Mr. Barbour, the then Secretary of War. The wildness of the incident acquires an additional local color from the prosy and florid style of American narration, which we would not destroy or lessen. The reader, then, must excuse something of prolixity, for the sake of character.

"You are already informed of our arrival at this place on the 31st ultimo, fand that no movement was made to capture the two murderers, who were reported to us to be at the village nine miles above, on account of an order received by Major Whistler from General Atkinson, directing him to await his arrival, and meantime to make no movement of any kind. We were, therefore, after the neces

inferred the first. Barges were sent across where they came over, the Red Bird carrying the white flag, and We-kaw by his side. While they were embarking, I passed a few yards from my tent, when a rattle-snake ran across the path: he was struck by Captain Dickeson with his sword, which in part disabled him, when I ran mine, it being of the sabre form, several times through the body, and finally through his head, and holding it up, it was cut off by a Menominie Indian with his knife. The body of the snake falling, was caught up by an Indian, whilst I went towards one of the fires to burn the head, that its fangs might be innoxious, when another Indian came running, and begged me for it; I gave it to him. The object of both was to make medicine of the reptile. This was interpreted to be a good omen, as had a previous killing of one a few mornings before on Fox river, and of a bear. *

**

"By this time the murderers were landed, accompanied by one hundred and fourteen of their principal men. They were preceded and represented by Caraminie, a chief, who earnestly begged that the prisoners might receive good treatment, and under no circumstances be put in irons. He appeared to dread the military, and wished to surrender them to the sub-agent, Mr. Marsh. His address being made to me, I told him it was proper he should go to the great chief (Major Whistler), and that so far as Mr. Marsh's presence might be agreeable to them, they should have it there. He appeared content, and moved on, followed by the men of his bands: the Red Bird being

round with porcupine quills, dyed yellow, red and blue, and on the tip of one shoulder was a tuft of red dyed horse-hair, curled in part, and mixed up with other ornaments. Across his breast, in a diagonal position, and bound tight to it, was his wir-pipe, at least three feet long, richly ornamented with feathers and horsehair, dyed red, and the bille of birds, &c., whilst in one hand he held the white flag and in the other the pipe of peace."

We hope our readers have Catholicity enough to excuse this Grandisonian minuteness, marvellous in a people so given to going ahead as the Americans. But if such is the taste of their Congress orations, how shall their national literature escape? The sentimental touches in the passage which follows (little needed, let us observe, by a scene intrinsically poetic and pathetic,) are as oddly characteristic of the most utilitarian nation under the sun, as the above anxious enumeration of the poor Red Bird's toilette trumperies.

in the centre, with his white flag; whilst two other flags, American, were borne by two chiefs, in the front and rear of the line. The military had previously been drawn out in line. The Menominie and Wabanocky Indian squatting about in groups (looking curious enough) on the left flank, the band of music on the right, a little in advance of the line. The murderers were marched up in front of the centre of the line, some ten or fifteen paces from which seats were arranged, and in front of which, at about ten paces, the Red Bird was halted, with his miserable looking companion We-kaw, by his side, while his band formed a semicircle to their right and left All eyes were fixed upon the Red Bird, and well they might be; for, of all the Indians I ever saw, he is decidedly the most perfect in form, in face, and in motion. In height he is about six feet, and in proportion, exact and perfect. *** His head too,-nothing was ever so well formed. There was no ornamenting of the hair after the Indian fashion: no clubbing it up in blocks and rollers of lead or silver; no loose or straggling parts, but it was cut after the best fashion of the most refined civilized taste. His face was painted, "There he stood. He moved not a muscle one side red, the other a little intermixed with nor once changed the expression of his face. green and white. Around his neck he wore a They were told to sit down. He sat down collar of blue wampum, beautifully mixed with with a grace not less captivating than he white, sewn on a piece of cloth, and covering walked and stood (!!) At this moment the it, of about two inches in width, whilst the band on our right struck up Pleyel's hymn claws of the panther, or large wild cat, were * * * when the hymn was played, he took fastened to the upper rim, and about a quarter up his pouch, and taking from it some kinnaof an inch from each other, their points down-kanie or tobacco, cut the latter after the Indian ward and inward, and resting upon the lower fashion, then rubbed the two together, filled rin of the collar; and around his neck, in the bowl of his beautiful peace pipe, struck strands of various lengths, enlarging as they fire with his steel and flint into a bit of spunk, descended, he wears a profusion of the same and lighted it and smoked. kind of wampum as had been worked so tastefully into his collar. He is clothed in a Yankton dress, new, rich, and beautiful. It is of beautifully dressed elk or deer skin; pure in its color, almost to a clear white, and consists of a jacket, (with nothing beneath it,) the sleeves of which are sown so neatly, as to fit his finely turned arms, leaving two or three inches of the skin outside of the sewing, and then again three or four inches more, which is cut into strips, as we cut paper to wrap round and ornament a candle. All this made a deep and rich fringe, whilst the same kind of ornament or trimming continued down the seams of his leggings. These were of the same material, and were additionally set off with blue beads. On his feet he wore mocassins. A piece of scarlet cloth, about a quarter of a "All sat, except the speakers, whose adyard wide, and half a yard long, by means of dresses I took down. * They were in a strip cut through its middle, so as to admi substance, that they had been required to bring the passage through of his head, rested, one in the murderers. They had no power over half upon his breast, and the other on his back. any except two, and these had voluntarily On one shoulder, and near his breast, was agreed to come and give themselves up. As large and beautifully-ornamented feather, nearly white and on the other, and opposite, was one nearly black, with two pieces of wood in the form of compasses when a little open, each about six inches long, richly wrapped

* * * *

"I could not but speculate a little on his dress. His white jacket, with one piece of red upon it, appeared to indicate the purity of his past life, stained with but a single crime; for all agree that the Red Bird had never before soiled his fingers with the blood of the white man, or committed a bad action. His warpipe, bound close to his heart, appeared to indicate his love of war, which was now no longer to be gratified. Perhaps the red or scarlet cloth may have been indicative of his name, the Red Bird."

The above receives a last touch of whimsicality little meditated, as being subscribed by one, who "writes in haste."

*

their friends they had come with them. They hoped their white brothers would agree to receive the horses, (they had with them twenty, perhaps.) meaning, that if accepted, it should be in commutation for the lives of their two

friends. They asked kind treatment for them, [his Rosalie listening to Music,' or to the earnestly begged that they might not be put in thousandth presentiment of 'Lorenzo and irons; that they should all have something to Jessica,' the best how infinitely below Shakeat, and tobacco to smoke. We advised them to warn their people against killing ours, and speare! endeavoring also to impress them with a proper conception of the extent of our power, and of their weakness, &c.

* *

"Having heard this, the Red Bird stood up; the commanding officer, Major Whistler. a few paces in advance of the centre of his line, facing him. After a pause of a minute, and a rapid survey of the troops, and a firm composed observation of his people, the Red Bird said, looking at Major Whistler, I am ready.' Then, advancing a step or two, he paused and added, 'I do not wish to be put in irons, let me be free. I have given my life, it is gone,' (stooping down and taking some dust between his finger and thumb, and blowing it away,) like this * I would not have it back. It is gone.' He threw his hands behind him, to indicate that he was braving all things behind him, and marched up to Major Whistler, breast to breast. A platoon was wheeled backward from the centre of the line, when Major Whistler stepping aside, the Red Bird and We-kaw marched through the line, in charge of a file of men, to a tent that had been provided in the rear, over which a guard was set. The comrades of the two captives then left the ground by the way they had come, taking with them our advice, and a supply of meat and flour (!!!).

*

* * The Red Bird does not appear to be thirty, yet he is said to be over forty * *. ”—Vol. iii., pp. 36 to 39.

Let us now turn to the portraits, and the anecdotage which accompanies them. The first is properly enough that of 'Red Jacket,' as the white men chose to call the Keeper Awake' of the Senecas. Is there not an acted bull' in this portrait-an inconsistency which ought not to have escaped the projectors of a national work? Red Jacket' was a professed hater of the white men-a contemner, we are expressly told, of their institutions-the point of disdaining to use any language save his own.' Yet here is this stickler for his nationality handed down to posterity, in the blue coat and Washington medal of those he abominated! It is true that all over the world we could find other portraits of the uncompromising, in like apparel, were we to seek! Kishkalwa,' the second subject in the gallery-nominally and legally head of the Shawanoe nation, is a far more genuine-looking personage, at least in a picture:-his nose garnished with a crescentshaped ring; his ears with cruel-looking appendages; his head with a comb or topknot of scarlet feathers (with a few civilized odds and ends' of riband) as bristling with defiance as Chanticleer Bantam's own! This fiery personage seems to have understood a joke as little as the editor of

The Red Bird died in prison. We-kaw, as generally happens to the confident, alias *The "Book of Offences" (a work which, by the shabbier fellow, and greater rascal of the way, we bg to commend to some comic mothe two, was left off; and comes in, more- ralist in search of a subject) would receive some over, for a reputation. There are despe- of its most curious pages from the history of savrate difficulties, we know, inherent in the age life. It is intelligible enough that the loss of subject. The uniform of Major Whistler a virile garment should be a sore subject. among and his men' are sad stumbling-blocks in while the crotchet passes through our brains we people particularly touchy in point of valor; but any painter's way, as Horace Vernet could cannot resist a far less serious anecdote of Indian tell us and it would require consummate offence, which has always struck us as alike tact to rescue the heroic Red Bird and the whimsical and inexplicable. When the Ojibbesneaking degraded We-kaw if drawn out ter the fashion of Mrs. Leo Hunter's) for "Toway party was in London, a party was made (afin all their bravery as described, from cer- bacco," the "Driving Cloud," and the rest of the tain May-day and masquerade associations, company: not forgetting the ladies. Their bewhich no sane artist would care to conjure havior was pronounced to be most discreet and up. Still we hold that an Alston would easy; it seem d, too, that they enjoyed themhave been more honorably and profitably the piano forte-player, and by way of ascertaining employed, as concerns Art, in trying to what amount of musical ear the distinguished harmonize such objects as these, and thus strangers possessed, he was requested to perform a to add to the world's stores of beauty-fantasia. He complied; the Indians sate, all atthan in measuring himself against the ancients by once again painting Jacob's Dream,' or entering the lists against the beauty-painters, who, like most women, have no character at all,' by devoting time, pains-aye, and poetical thought, too-to

selves. But in an evil hour arrived Mr.

tntion, to the very end. But, then, rising up very gravly and with some ceremony, they left the room; went down stairs to the parlor on the ground-floor, resisting all entreaties; and there the appointed hour of departure. They had been sating themselves on the floor, wait d in dignity affronted :- nothing further, we believe, was ever explained.

"My Grandmother's Review," in the days graceful and accomplished orator he had of Byron. Being jeered on the laying seen amongst the Indians, with the followaside of his one garment during certain ing paragraph, in which we are told that warlike operations, as though he had been "he seems to have exhibited neither hona coward who had dropped his " ineffables" esty nor dignity of character in any relawhile running away, he undertook a foray tion of life." The tale of Tecumthe, howor razzia, to wipe away this stain on his ever, is one of the best in the collectioncharacter:-and it was one of the express full of subject. conditions of the peace which followed his The portrait of Waapashaw, chief of the victorious arms, sealed by the present of a Dacotah nation, a sagacious looking man, beautiful young lady, that Kishkalwa's in an European dress, like the Prophet "vestment" (to quote the precise noun minus an eye, gives his biographers occawhich transatlantic scrupulosity enjoins) sion to relieve his tribe from the stigma should, indeed, be henceforth remembered which has been laid upon it, of a vice no among the "unmentionables." Shinga- less loathsome than cannibalism.

The

ba W'Ossin; or, Image Stone," a Chippe- name of the Keoxa tribe, to which he bewa Indian, has, also, a fine, unsophisticated longs, meaning "relationship overlooked," head; though, unlike "Red Jacket," he implies marriages forbidden in the last leaf was so far in advance of his tribe, as to en- of the prayer-book; and one admitted praccourage investigation with regard to a Mani- tice of questionable reputation (for even tou or object sanctified by superstition among savages it is curious to observe how the huge mass of virgin copper, known to constantly the dawnings of moral percepall mineralogists and American tourists as tion touch the same points) may have led existing on the Outanogon River, Lake to false accusations of another. The TwigSuperior. A famous subject, too, for the hees and the Kickapoos (vide vol. iii. p. 26) painter, though in a transition state between will hardly come out from under the accuthe "osprey wing" style of dress and the sation so easily. We are assured that they adoption of the militia uniform, is Tens- had a society expressly ordained for the kautawau-"The Open Door." Though maintenance of the practice: possiblydescribed as a person of slender intellects, who knows?-their Hieroglyphic Human weak, cruel, and sensual; despite, too, the Cookery Book! Nathless, let us charitably loss of an eye, this personage had a bland point out, that exact information on subjects and agreeable presence. Brother to the like these-where credulous horror and well-known Chief Tecumthe, "The Open cunning ignorance meet, the one as willing Door" enjoys an almost equal renown as a to be mystified as the other is anxious to prophet. When we read in these Indian mystify-comprehends precisely that branch annals of a hit so lucky as his fixing the precise day for an earthquake, and recollect how on no stronger grounds our gentry believed in Murphy, (not to recall the more humiliating trust of their tenantry in the Canterbury fanatic,) we must not appropriate "The Open Door's" success as a trait of savage life, so much as of universal credulous humanity. We only protest As we advance in the volume, we get against the "slenderness" allotted to his deeper and deeper into the wilderness, as The Biographers, however, attribute it were-among wilder people. Some of the contrivance of the juggle to Tecumthe, the heads are very fierce, initiating us into who, among his other schemes of assisting the mysteries of Indian paint. Wesh Cubb, Indian rights and regenerating Indian morals, including even a temperance movement, perceived that supernatural influences would make an important figure. Even a puppet, however, must be in some degree stoutly and symmetrically framed to answer to the jerk of the master's hand. And we can hardly reconcile such an assertion as that the Prophet was pronounced by General Harrison to have been the most

of testimony which is to be least relied upon. Ferocity or revenge may drive untutored people into exceptional crimes; and the extreme reluctance to admit the fact, which all savages have ever shown, would argue a sort of instinctive averseness, which warrants our generally receiving tales of the systematized practice cum grano.

"The Sweet,"-whose son was seized with the vagary of fancying himself a woman, and devoting himself to the degradation of feminine employments,-has a most becoming crescent of green spots upon his cheeks:-Caatousee, or "Creeping out of the Water," a square patch of yet brighter verdigris, in which one cruel eye is set as cleanly as a bead in a patch of enamel. Peah-mus-ka, a Fox chief (whose barbette

à la Pischek makes a whimsical disturb- cess: as her widowed husband phrased it, ance of our visions of prairies, portages, "when the poor came, it was like a strainer and other features of wild life in the West) full of holes, letting all she had pass has his black handkerchief cap tied on, as through." She was extreme, moreover, in it were, by a streak of vermilion under the her tenderness of her conscience, "often chin, by which also his ear is dyed. While feared that her acts were displeasing to the we are on the subject of aboriginal "paint Great Spirit, when she would blacken her and patches," commend us to No-way-ke- face and retire to some lone place, and fast sug-ga, the Ottoe chief, whose portrait is to and pray." But we take it that so far as be found early in volume the third, and any grace which free-will gives can go, whose citron green chin, with a Vandyke "the female flying Pigeon was rather an pattern of the same piquant nuance across exceptional than an average woman. It is his forehead,"composes" with the superb true that, in her charming "Winter Studies cherry-colored plume of horse-hair or fea- and Summer Rambles," Mrs. Jameson, thers upon his head, so as to form an ar- whose honorable desire to improve the conrangement of color of which a Parisian dition of her sex, sometimes leads her into designer of fancies might be proud. There odd puzzles and paradoxes, does her best is somewhat of caprice, we are told, in for the Squaw; trying to prove her condithese decorations-a caprice, it seems, con- tion in some essential points far better than stant in the avoidance of "the stars and that of the conventionalized white woman, stripes," though not seldom awkwardly em- (as the jargon of the day runs). And we ulating the lines of "the Union Jack; suppose that social philosophers on the -but we take it for granted, something of other side of the argument-the power symbolism also. And in these days, when theorists to wit,-would declare that Man's reds and blues are mere matters of faith ministering Angel was in her right place, and orthodoxy, when the cut of an aure- when hewing wood and drawing water, cole, or the frilling and flouncing of an ini- drudging in the fields, and dragging burtial letter, become subjects concerning dens, leaving "her master" undisturbed in which homilies are preached, and libraries the nobler occupations of fighting and written we must not be thought absurd in recommending to American savans, "the nature and significance of Indian paint, as a mystery worth looking into, for the use of historians and artists yet unborn. Out of accidents little less freakish, we take it, did the whole school of what is by some called Christian Art, originally construct itself. At all events, there is now some possibility of obtaining information on these important matters-though at the risk of depriving controversialists in embryo of their life-breath; to wit, matter for controversy. To speak, meanwhile, of a matter of detail, in its order, important,we are surprised that in a work like this, so carefully and expensively produced, greater descriptive minuteness was not thought necessary. There are many accessories and objects introduced into these portraits, which we neither know how to describe or to name. This ought not to have been.

foraging. But we confess that we are a trifle hard to convince as to the supreme felicity of the Indian woman's lot. The utmost her race has done has been to produce, not a Boadicea, but a Pocahontas. Of this last, "the heroine of the tribes," we have somewhat too niggardly a notice. There is a portrait of her, however, in her civilized condition, which an appendical series of documents assure us is authentic: the features wearing an expression of grave and womanly sweetness, befitting one whose name was somewhat prophetically "a rivulet of peace between two nations."

But this is not the time or place for us to argue out the great question of the Lady and the Lord, to determine how far (as Cherub says) Nature never meant that a Griseldis should be put to the test by her Sir Perceval, or vice versa. Ample opportunities to hear New Wisdom against Old Prejudice are sure to present themselves! The portrait of a Rant-che-wai-me, The mention of "authentication" and its "Female flying Pigeon," also called "the accompanying assertion that all these porbeautiful female Eagle who flies in the air," traits are warrantable, recalls to us yet anreminds us that we have been somewhat other of the curious peculiarities of savage remiss in paying our dues to the gentle sex.life: namely, great solicitude and touchiBut this is true forest fashion. The lady ness in the delicate matter of resemblances before us is mild and gracious looking. painted. Queen Elizabeth herself, with We were told she was free-handed to an ex- her royal command of " garden lights," and