ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad runners; ignorant of every means of living in the woods; unable to bear either cold or hunger; knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy; spoke our language imperfectly; were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."

Success of a Missionary.-Those who have attempted to Christianise the Indians complain that they are too silent, and that their taciturnity is the greatest difficulty with which they have to contend. Their notions of propriety upon matters of conversation are so nice, that they deem it improper, in the highest degree, even to deny or contradict any thing that is said, at the time; and hence the difficulty of knowing what effect any thing has upon their minds at the time of delivery. In this they have a proper advantage; for how often does it happen that people would answer very differently upon a matter, were they to consider upon it but a short time! The Indians seldom answer a matter of importance the same day, lest, in so doing, they should be thought to have treated it as though it was of small consequence. We oftener repent of a hasty decision, than that we have lost time in maturing our judgments. Now for the anecdote: and as it is from the Essays of Dr. Franklin, it shall be told in his

own way.

"A Swedish minister, having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded; such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple; the coming of Christ to repair the mischief; his miracles and sufferings, &c. When he had finished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him. . What you

have told us,' said he, is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things, which you have heard from your mothers.'

"When the Indian had told the missionary one of the legends of his nation, how they had been supplied with maize or corn, beans and tobacco,* he treated it with contempt, and said, 'What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction,

The story of the beautiful woman, who descended to the earth, and was fed by the Indians, Black-Hawk is made to tell, in his life, page 78. It is the same often told, and alluded to by Franklin in the text. To reward the Indians for their kindness, she caused corn to grow where her right hand had touched the earth, beans where the left rested, and tobacco where she was seated.

and falsehood.' The Indian felt indignant, and replied, 'My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You see that we, who understand and practise those rules, believe all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours !'"

Curiosity." When any of the Indians come into our towns, our people are apt to crowd round them, gaze upon them, and incommode them where they desire to be private; this they esteem great rudeness, and the effect of the want of instruction in the rules of civility and good manners. We have,' say they, as much curiosity as you, and when you come into our towns, we wish for opportunities of looking at you; but for this purpose we hide ourselves behind bushes where you are to pass, and never intrude ourselves into your company.'

Rules of conversation."The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories, (for they have no writing,) and communicate it to their children. They are the records of the council, and they preserve tradition of the stipulations in treaties a hundred years back, which, when we compare with our writings, we always find exact. He that would speak rises. The rest observe a profound silence. When he has finished and sits down, they leave him five or six minutes to recollect, so that if he has omitted any thing he intended to say, or has any thing to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British house of commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion, that makes the speaker hoarse in calling to order; and how different from the mode of conversation in many polite companies of Europe, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to finish it." Instead of being better since the days of Franklin, we apprehend it has grown worse. The modest and unassuming often find it exceeding difficult to gain a hearing at all. Ladies, and many who consider themselves examples of good manners, transgress to an insufferable degree, in breaking in upon the conversations of others. Some of these, like a ship driven by a northwester, bearing down the small craft in her course, come upon us by surprise, and if we attempt to proceed by raising our voices a little, we are sure to be drowned by a much greater elevation on their part. It is a want of good breeding which, it is hoped, every young person whose eye this may meet will not be guilty of through life. There is great opportunity for many of mature years to profit by it.

Lost confidence.-An Indian runner, arriving in a village of his countrymen, requested the immediate attendance of its inhabitants in council, as he wanted their answer to important information. The people accordingly assembled, but when the messenger had with great anxiety delivered his message, and waited for an answer, none was given, and he soon observed that he was likely to be left alone in his

place. A stranger present asked a principal chief the meaning of this strange proceeding, who gave this answer, "He once told us a lie."

Comic.-An Indian having been found frozen to death, an inquest of his countrymen was convened to determine by what means he came to such a death. Their verdict was, "Death from the freezing of a great quantity of water inside of him, which they were of opinion he had drunken for rum."

A serious question.-About 1794, an officer presented a western chief with a medal, on one side of which President Washington was represented as armed with a sword, and on the other an Indian was seen in the act of burying the hatchet. The chief at once saw the wrong done his countrymen, and very wisely asked, "Why does not the president bury his sword too?"

Self-esteem.-A white man, meeting an Indian, accosted him as brother. The red man, with a great expression of meaning in his countenance, inquired how they came to be brothers; the white man replied, "O, by way of Adam, I suppose." The Indian added, "Me thank him Great Spirit we no nearer brothers."

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A preacher taken at his word.--A certain clergyman had for his text on a time, "Vow and pay the Lord thy vows." An Indian happened to be present, who stepped up to the priest as soon as he had finished, and said to him, "Now me vow me go home with you, Mr. Minister." The priest, having no language of evasion at command, said, "You must go, then." When he had arrived at the home of the minister, the Indian vowed again, saying, "Now me vow me have supper." When this was finished, he said, "Me vow me stay all night." The priest, by this time thinking himself sufficiently taxed, replied, "It may be so, but I vow you shall go in the morning." The Indian, judging from the tone of his host that more vows would be useless, departed in the morning sans ceremonie.

A case of signal barbarity.—It is related by Black Hawk, in his life, that some time before the war of 1812, one of the Indians had killed a Frenchman at Prairie du Chiens. "The British soon after took him prisoner, and said they would shoot him the next day. His family were encamped a short distance below the mouth of the Ouisconsin. He begged permission to go and see them that night, as he was to die the next day! They permitted him to go, after promising to return the next morning by sunrise. He visited his family, which consisted of a wife and six children. I cannot describe their meeting and parting, to be understood by the whites, as it appears that their feelings are acted upon by certain rules laid down by their preachers, whilst ours are governed only by the monitor within us. He parted from his wife and children, hurried through the prairie to the fort, and arrived in time. The soldiers were ready, and immediately marched out and shot him down!" If this were not cold-blooded, deliberate murder, on the part of the whites, I have no conception of what constitutes that crime. What were the circumstances of the murder we are not informed; but whatever they may have been, they cannot excuse a still greater barbarity. I would not by any means

be understood to advocate the cause of a murderer; but I will ask, whether crime is to be prevented by crime: murder for murder is only a brutal retaliation, except where the safety of a community requires the sacrifice.

Mourning much in a short time.--A young widow, whose husband had been dead about eight days, was hastening to finish her grief, in order that she might be married to a young warrior; she was determined, therefore, to grieve much in a short time; to this end she tore her hair, drank spirits, and beat her breast, to make the tears flow abundantly; by which means, on the evening of the eighth day, she was ready again to marry, having grieved sufficiently.

How to evade a hard question.--When Mr. Gist went over the Alleghanies, in February, 1751, on a tour of discovery for the Ohio Company, "an Indian, who spoke good English, came to him, and said that their great man, the Beaver, and Captain Oppamyluah, (two chiefs of the Delawares,) desired to know where the Indians' land lay, for the French claimed all the land on one side of the Ohio river, and the English on the other." This question Mr. Gist found it hard to answer, and he evaded it by saying, that the Indians and white men were all subjects to the same king, and all had an equal privilege of taking up and possessing the land in conformity with the conditions prescribed by the king.

Credulity its own punishment.--The traveller Wansey, according to his own account, would not enter into conversation with an eminent chief, because he had heard that it had been said of him that he had in his time "shed blood enough to swim in." He had a great desire to become acquainted with the Indian character, but his credulity debarred him effectually from the gratification. The chief was a Creek, named Flamingo, who, in company with another called DoubleHead, visited Philadelphia as ambassadors, in the summer of 1794. Few travellers discover such scrupulousness, especially those who come to America. That Flamingo was more bloody than other Indian warriors is by no means probable, but a mere report of his being a great shedder of blood kept Mr. Wansey from saying any more about him.

Just indignation.--Hatuay, a powerful chief of Hispaniola, having fled from thence to avoid slavery or death when that island was ravaged by the Spaniards, was taken in 1511, when they conquered Cuba, and burnt at the stake. After being bound to the stake, a Franciscan friar labored to convert him to the Catholic faith, by promises of immediate and eternal bliss in the world to come if he would believe; and that, if he would not, eternal torments were his only portion. The cazique, with seeming composure, asked if there were any Spaniards in those regions of bliss. On being answered that there were, he replied, "Then I will not go to a place where I may meet with one of that accursed race."

Harmless deception. In a time of Indian troubles, an Indian visited the house of Governor Jenks, of Rhode Island, when the governor took occasion to request him that, if any strange Indian

should come to his wigwam, to let him know it, which the Indian promised to do; but, to secure his fidelity, the governor told him that when he should give him such information, he would give him a mug of flip. Some time after the Indian came again: "Well, Mr. Gubenor, strange Indian come to my house last night." "Ah!" says the governor, "and what did he say?" "He no speak," replied the Indian. "What! not speak at all?" added the governor. "No, he no speak at all." "That certainly looks suspicious," said his excellency, and inquired if he were still there, and being told that he was, ordered the promised mug of flip. When this was disposed of, and the Indian was about to depart, he mildly said, "Mr. Gubenor, my squaw have child last night;" and thus the governor's alarm was suddenly changed into disappointment, and the strange Indian into a new-born papoose.

Mammoth bones.-The following very interesting tradition concerning these bones among the Indians, will always be read with interest. The animal to which they once belonged they call the Big Buffalo; and on the early maps of the country of the Ohio we see marked, "Elephants' bones said to be found here." They were for some time by many supposed to have been the bones of that animal, but they are pretty generally now believed to have belonged to a species of animal long since extinct. They have been found in various parts of the country, but in the greatest abundance about the salt licks or springs in Kentucky and Ohio. There has never been an entire skeleton found, although the one in Peale's museum, in Philadelphia, was so near perfect, that, by a little ingenuity in supplying its defects with wood-work, it passes extremely well for such.

The tradition of the Indians concerning this animal is, that he was carnivorous, and existed, as late as 1780; in the northern parts of America. Some Delawares, in the time of the revolutionary war, visited the Governor of Virginia on business, which having been finished, some questions were put to them concerning their country, and especially what they knew or had heard respecting the animals whose bones had been found about the salt licks on the Ohio river. "The chief speaker," continues our author, Mr. Jefferson, " immediately put himself into an attitude of oratory, and, with a pomp suited to what he conceived the elevation of his subject," began and repeated as follows:-" In ancient times, a herd of these tremendous animals came to the Big-bone Licks, and began an universal destruction of the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals, which had been created for the use of the Indians: the great man above, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged, that he seized his lightning, descended to the earth, and seated himself on a neighboring mountain, on a rock of which his seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered, except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell; but missing one at length, it wounded him in the side; whereon, springing round, he bounded over the Ohio, over the