"_Pinus Microcarpa_ (Red Larch) resembles the preceding so much, that

Michaux and Wildman confounded the two species together. The red larch,

however, is now clearly distinguished as a distinct kind. It is named by

the voyageurs L'Epinette Rouge, and by the Hudson's Bay men

Juniper."--H. Murray's _British America_, vol. iii., p. 328; R. M.

Martin, p. 254; Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Pinus.

No. XXVIII.

"The canoes that navigate the Canadian lakes are among the most

ingenious and useful of the Indian manufactures, and nothing that

European ingenuity has devised is so well adapted to the habits and

necessities of their mode of life. They are made of the bark of the

birch-tree; and of all the various contrivances for transporting burdens

by water, these vessels are the most extraordinary. From the slightness

of their construction, they would appear to be totally inadequate to

contend against the rapids they are continually exposed to. They are of

various lengths, from twelve to thirty feet (the latter used only by the

Hudson's Bay Company); their breadth from four to six feet, diminishing

to a point at each end without distinction. The exterior is the bark of

the birch-tree, scarcely the eighth part of an inch in thickness: it is

kept distended by thin hoops and the bark; the gunwale is a narrow lath,

to which the hoop and the bark are sewed with narrow strips of the roots

of the white cedar-tree; and the joinings in the bark are rendered

water-proof by a species of gum, said to be collected from the wild

cherry-tree, which soon becomes perfectly hard. No iron work or nails

are employed in their construction; and they are so light, that the

common-sized ones are easily carried for several miles by a man of

moderate strength. They are worked by paddles over the sides, and the

dexterity of the Indians in working them is surprising. They, of course,

push them forward, and not backward, as in the operation of rowing. The

largest description will carry about five tons of merchandise, besides

eight or ten men. The great objection that attends the use of bark

canoes is the difficulty of keeping them water-tight. It requires the

greatest attention to prevent them from touching a rock, or even the

shore, as they would otherwise break; hence they are never brought near

to the bank. Two men keep the canoe afloat at a distance, while the rest

of the crew load or unload her. The canoe is unloaded every night,

raised out of the water, and left on the beach bottom upward. This is

also occasionally done when they stop during the day: it affords an

opportunity of allowing the canoe to dry, otherwise the bark absorbs

much water, and becomes very heavy. All motion on the part of those on

board is to be avoided, as it causes the pitch to crack, and renders the

canoe leaky."--Keating's _Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of

St. Peter's River_, vol. ii., p. 72, quoted in Sir George Simpson's

_Overland Journey Round the World_, vol. i., p. 14.

La Hontan, in 1684, gives the same description of the bark canoes, and

complains of "the inconvenience of their brittle and tender fabric. If

they do but touch or grate upon stone or sand, the cracks of the bark

fly open, upon which the water gets in, and spoils the provisions and

merchandise. Every day there is some new chink or seam to be gummed

over. At night they are always unloaded and carried on shore, where they

are made fast with pegs, lest the wind should blow them away."

Charlevoix gives a nearly similar account in 1720, vol. v., p. 285. He

adds: "Tous ces canots, jusqu'au plus petits, portent la voile et avec

un bon vent peuvent faire vingt lieues par jour. Sans voiles il faut

avoir de bons canoteurs pour en faire douze dans une eau morte."

No. XXIX.

"Many of the species of _Acer_ form large, ornamental, and valuable

trees. The kinds in most esteem for making sugar are _Acer dasycarpum_

(white, or soft maple), _Acer nigrum_ (black sugar maple), and _Acer

saccharinum_ (the sugar maple), the last two yielding the greatest

quantity of sugar. The process by which the sap is obtained is extremely

simple, nothing more being necessary than to bore a hole in the tree,

and conduct the flowing liquid, by means of a hollowed piece of wood,

into a vessel beneath. Whatever quantity of sap is collected, it must be

boiled down the same evening, as it is liable to be spoiled by

fermentation in the course of a few hours. The operation of boiling is

generally performed in a very primitive way: it is thus described by the

intelligent authoress of _Backwoods of Canada_: 'A pole was fixed across

two forked stakes strong enough to bear the weight of the big kettle.

The employment during the day was emptying the troughs and chopping wood

to supply the fires. In the evening they lit the fires and began boiling

down the sap. It was a pretty and picturesque sight to see the sugar

boilers, with their bright log-fire among the trees, now stirring up the

blazing pile, now throwing in the liquid, and stirring it down with a

big ladle. When the fire grew fierce it boiled and foamed up in the

kettle, and they had to throw in fresh sap to keep it from running over.

When the sap begins to thicken into molasses, it is then brought to the

sugar boiler to be finished. The process is simple: it only requires

attention in skimming, and keeping the mass from boiling over, till it

has arrived at the sugaring point, which is ascertained by dropping a

little into cold water. When it is near the proper consistency, the

kettle or pot becomes full of yellow froth, that dimples and rises in

large bubbles from beneath. These throw out puffs of steam, and when the

molasses is in this stage it is nearly converted into sugar. Those who

pay great attention to keeping the liquid free from scum, and

understand the precise sugaring point, will produce an article little,

if at all, inferior to Muscovado.' It is, however, often adulterated

with flour, which thickens and renders it heavy. It is very hard, and

requires to be scraped with a knife when used for tea, otherwise the

lumps would be a considerable time in dissolving. The Canadians say that

it possesses medicinal qualities, for which they eat it in large lumps.

It very possibly acts as a corrective to the vast quantity of fat pork

which they consume, as it possesses a greater degree of acidity than the

West India sugar. Before salt was in use, sugar was eaten with meat, as

a corrective; hence, probably, the custom of eating sweet apple-sauce

with pork and goose, and currant-jelly with hare and venison."--Lambert,

vol. i., p. 84.

"The production of maple sugar amounted (in 1836) to about 25,000 cwt.

annually. A plantation of maple is termed 'suegari,' and is considered

very valuable: the sugar sells from 3_d._ to 6_d._ per pound. A moderate

tree is said to yield from twenty to thirty gallons of the sap, from

which may be extracted five or six pounds of sugar. Nor is sugar the

only product to be obtained from this valuable tree: strong and

excellent vinegar is made from it, as well as good wine; and, with the

addition of hops, sound and pleasant beer may be had at a very trifling

expense."--H. Murray's _Canada_, vol. iii., p. 315; Gray's _Canada_, p.

224.

"It is a very remarkable fact that these trees, after having been tapped

for six or seven successive years, always yield more sap than they do on

being first wounded. This sap, however, is not so rich as that which the

trees distill for the first time; but, from its coming in an increased

portion, as much sugar is generally produced from a single tree on the

fifth or sixth year of its being tapped as on the first.

"The ingenious Mr. Nooth, of Quebec, who is at the head of the general

hospital in Canada, has made a variety of experiments upon the

manufacture of maple sugar. He has granulated, and also refined it, so

as to render it equal to the best lump sugar that is made in England. To

convince the Canadians also, who are as incredulous on some points as

they are credulous on others, that it was really maple sugar that they

saw thus refined, he has contrived to have large lumps, exhibiting the

sugar in its different stages toward refinement, the lower part of the

lumps being left hard, similar to the common cakes, the middle part

granulated, and the upper part refined. Dr. Nooth has calculated that

the sale of the molasses alone would be fully adequate to the expense of

refining the maple sugar, if a manufactory for that purpose were

established. Some attempts have been made to establish one of the kind

at Quebec, but they have never succeeded, as the persons by whom they

were made were adventurers that had not sufficient capital for such an

undertaking."--Weld, 1800, p. 271.

Charlevoix says in his _Journal_, "On me regale ici d'eau d'erable--elle

est delicieuse, d'un fraicheur admirable et fort saine. Pour qu'elle

coule avec abondance, il faut qu'il y ait beaucoup de neiges sur la

terre, qu'il ait gele pendant la nuit, que le ciel soit serein, et que

le vent ne soit pas trop froid. Nos erables auroient peut-etre la meme

vertu, si nous avions en France autant de neiges qu'en Canada, et si

elles y duroient aussi lontems. J'en ai donne a foudre a un refineur

d'Orleans qui n'y a trouve d'autre defaut que ce qu'il n'avoit pas ete

suffisamment egoute. Il le croyoit meme de meilleure qualite de

l'autre."--Vol. v., p. 181.

No. XXX.

"Quelques nations tirent leur subsistance, d'une sorte de grain que la

Nature produit d'elle-meme; on le nomme le folle-avoine, dont les

Francais ont transporte le nom a quelques-unes de ces nations. C'est une

plante marecageuse qui approche assez de l'avoine, mais qui est mieux

nourrie. Les sauvages vont la chercher dans leurs canots, au tems de sa

maturite. Ils ne font que secouer les epis, les quels s'egraissent

facilement, de sorte que leurs canots sont bientot remplis, et leurs

provisions bientot faites, sans qu'ils soient obliges de labourer ni de

semer."--Lafitau, tom. ii., 96.

This grain is the _Zizania aquatica_ of Linnaeus. Kalm calls it the water

tare-grass, and says that "the Indians reckon it among their dainty

dishes. It grows in plenty in their lakes, in stagnant waters, and

sometimes in rivers which flow slowly. They gather its seeds in October,

and prepare them in different ways, and chiefly as groats, which take

almost as well as rice."--Kalm, in Pinkerton, vol. xiii., p. 696.

"Common in all the waters from Canada to Florida, and known by the name

of Tuscarora,[225] or wild rice."--Pursh. Sir Joseph Banks introduced it

into this country in 1790, and cultivated it abundantly in the ponds of

his villa of Spring Grove. The seeds were obtained from Canada in jars

of water. Mr. Lambert is of opinion that this grain might be cultivated

in many shallow lakes of Ireland, and turned to considerable advantage.

[Footnote 225: The Tuscaroras, so called from the Wild Rice, were a race

of the Iroquois. It is of them that the fable was narrated that Owen

Chapelain (in 1619) saved himself from their hands, when they were about

to scalp him, by speaking in his Gaelic mother tongue. Catlin is

inclined to consider the fair and frequently blue-eyed nation of the

Tuscaroras to be a mixed race, between the ancient Welsh and the

American aboriginal tribes.]

No. XXXI.

"The soil and climate of Canada are admirably adapted to the growth of

hemp. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., assert, in their

preface to Vol. XXI., 'That they have ascertained, by actual

experiments, that Canada can furnish hemp equal in quality for the uses

of the navy to that from the Baltic.' Hemp is one of the most valuable

and profitable productions of the earth. It enriches the cultivator,

and furnishes shipping with the most useful and important part of its

equipment. The several processes of hemp, also, benefit the state, by

employing many hands that could not be so usefully and profitably

engaged in other occupations. The advantage, therefore, which a country

must derive from the culture and manufacture of hemp, throughout its

several branches, can not be doubted, and is sufficiently proved by the

importance which Russia has derived from her commerce in that article,

by which she has, in a manner, rendered the greatest navy in the world

dependent upon her will and caprice. The importation of hemp from Russia

has annually amounted to no less than 30,000 tons for the general

consumption of the country, and for the use of the royal navy. It must,

therefore, in every point of view, be a great object to Great Britain to

draw her supplies of hemp from her own colonies. The efforts of

government to promote its general cultivation have hitherto proved very

partially successful. The failure is attributed, in a great degree, to

the attachment of the Canadians to old customs, and the opposition of

the Romish clergy, hemp not being a tithable article. The wheat

merchants and the seigniors, who depend for success in trade and for the

constant employment of their mills, the chief source of their revenues,

upon abundant crops of wheat, are strongly opposed to the introduction

of the culture of hemp, which they conceive would partly, if not wholly,

annihilate that of wheat."--Lambert, vol. i., p. 449.

M. de Talon, the able Intendant of Quebec (in 1665), strongly

recommended the cultivation of hemp, having ascertained that the nature

of the soil and climate promised every possible success.

No. XXXII.

"It is calculated that there is a greater proportion of wheat soil in

the Canadas than in England, and that, if this valuable grain were

cultivated in this latter country in the same defective manner as in

these provinces, it could not be of much value. Climate, an equally

important particular, seems, at first sight, less favorable than soil. A

region which for several months, and, in some districts, for more than

half the year, remains buried in frost and snow, may well be supposed

unfriendly to vegetation. The strong, steady heat of summer, however,

counteracts almost completely this chilling influence, and matures, with

surprising rapidity, the most valuable plants. Mr. Evans has had wheat

in ear nine weeks after it was sown. Even the violent alternations of

frost and thaw, of snow and rain, instead of injuring vegetation, are

found to pulverize and soften the soil, and thus render it more fertile

with less culture. The great steadiness of the summer weather exempts

plants from sundry vicissitudes which they undergo in a more changeable

climate. From these causes, the _annuals_ suited to a temperate region

grow in Canada to full perfection, and as these include the grains

fitted for bread, the food most essential to man, she has little cause

to envy any other country. In regard to wheat, indeed, the chief of

those vegetables, this observation must be somewhat restricted. Its

plants are so far biennial, that to acquire the very first quality they

must be sown during the preceding autumn. Yet this course has not been

found safe in Lower Canada, where wheat must be treated as an annual,

sown in spring, and reaped before the end of the year. The defect is

owing, not to the rigor of the winter, still less to the depth of snow,

which, on the contrary, is found to protect and cherish vegetable

growth, but is ascribed to severe frosts, violent and chilling rains,

occurring after the snow has left the ground, and the plants have made

some progress. An opinion is entertained that, with good management,

autumn wheat might be raised with success. The British American Land

Company have decidedly adopted this idea, and some successful

experiments have been made. Mr. Evans, however, is of opinion that, from

the above causes, unless in some favored situations, it must always be

an unsafe crop, and peculiarly liable to disease. He had once autumn and

spring wheats growing on the same field, when, although the first was

completely ruined by rust and mildew, the other proved excellent. He

seems to apprehend, therefore, that Lower Canada must be content with

her good spring growth. It is said, however, to require a soil more

minutely pulverized, while the grain produced contains a greater

proportion of gluten, and is thus harder and more difficult to grind. In

Upper Canada, autumn wheat is raised without any difficulty."--H.

Murray, vol. i., p. 339.

"Canada wheat is of an excellent quality: it is thought superior to the

Baltic wheat, being harder, and yielding more flour in proportion to the

quality. The Canadian farmers are very negligent in preventing the

growth of weeds, so that the wheat, when thrashed, is very foul, and

seldom or never in a condition to be shipped until it is cleaned. For

that purpose, it undergoes the operation of being once or twice put

through what is called the _cribbles_."--Gray's _Canada_, p. 199.

No. XXXIII.

It is still a subject of dispute among naturalists whether the moose

deer and the elk are the same animal. Professor Kalm and his translator,

Forster, formed this opinion principally on the Algonquin name for the

elk, _Musu_, the final u being scarcely sounded. The Algonquins, before

the Iroquois attained to such great power in America, were the principal

nation in the northern part of the continent, and their language a kind

of universal language. Charlevoix says, "Ce qu'on appelle ici Orignal,

c'est ce qu'en Allemagne, en Pologne, et en Muscovie on nomme Elau, ou

la Grand Bete." The first mention of this remarkable animal is in a

tract of Mr. Josselyn's, entitled "New England Rarities." That author

says, "It is a very fine creature, growing to twelve feet high; the

horns are extremely beautiful, with broad palms, some of them full

grown, being two fathoms from the tip of one horn to the tip of the

other." The same author, in another work, entitled "Two Voyages to New

England," calls this creature "a monster of superfluity;" and says that,

"when full grown, it is many times larger than an ox." The best account,

however, of the moose deer is Mr. Paul Dudley's. This gentleman says

they are of two kinds: the common light-gray moose deer, called by the

Indians _Wampoose_, and the larger black moose. The gray moose is the

same animal which Mr. Clayton, in his account of the Virginian

quadrupeds, calls the elk; and this is the creature described in the

Anatomical Discoveries of the Paris Academy under the name of the stag

of Canada. Horns of this creature have been sent from Virginia, and

called elks' horns; they are wholly the same with those of our red deer,

except in size, weighing about twelve pounds, and measuring from the

burr to the tip about six feet long.--_Phil. Trans._, No. cxliv., p.

386; Abr., vol. vii., p. 447. Mr. Dudley says that the gray moose is

like the English deer, and that these creatures herd together thirty or

more in a company. The black or large moose has been taken, he says,

measuring 14 spans in height from the withers, which, allowing 9 inches

to the span, is 10-1/2 feet. The large horns found fossil in Ireland

have, from their vast dimensions, been supposed to have originally

belonged to the black moose deer; they are provided with brow antlers

between the burr and the palm, which the European elk has not, and the

American has. However, the largest horns of the American moose ever

brought over are only 32 inches long, and 34 between tip and tip, while

some of the Irish horns are near 12 feet between tip and tip, and 6 feet

4 inches long; they may probably be ranked among those remains which

fossilists distinguish by the title of diluvian.

Professor Kalm says, "They sometimes dig very large horns out of the

ground in Ireland, and nobody in that country, or any where else in the

world, knows any animal that has such horns. This has induced many to

believe that it is the moose deer so famous in North America, and that

the horns found were of animals of this kind which had formerly lived in

that island, but were gradually destroyed. It has even been concluded

that Ireland, in distant ages, either was connected with North America,

or that a number of little islands, which are lost at present, made a

chain between them. This led me to inquire whether an animal with such

excessive great horns as are ascribed to the moose deer had ever been

seen in any part of this country. Mr. Bertram told me that he had

carefully inquired to that purpose, and was entirely of opinion that

there was no such animal in North America. Mr. Franklin related that he

had, when a boy, seen two of the animals which they call moose deer; but

he well remembered that they were not near of such a size as they must

have been if the horns found in Ireland were to fit them. The two

animals which he saw were brought to Boston in order to be sent to

England to Queen Anne. The height of the animal up to the back was that

of a pretty tall horse, but the head and its horns were still higher. On

my travels in Canada, I often inquired of the Frenchmen whether there

had ever been seen so large an animal in this country as some people say

there is in North America, and with such great horns as are sometimes

dug out in Ireland. But I was always told that they had never heard of

it, much less seen it; some added that if there was such an animal, they

certainly must have met with it in some of their excursions in the

woods."--Kalm, in Pink., vol. xiii., p. 472. In shape the elk or moose

deer is much less elegant than the rest of the deer kind, having a very

short and thick neck; a large head; horns dilating immediately from the

base into a broad, palmated form; a thick, broad upper lip, hanging very

much over the lower; very high shoulders, and long legs. The hair is a

dark grayish-brown color, strong, coarse, and elastic, much longer on

the top of the shoulders and ridge of the neck than on other parts,

forming together a kind of stiffish mane; the eye and ears are large,

the hoofs broad, and the tail extremely short. The elk resides

principally in the midst of forests, for the convenience of browsing the

boughs of trees, because it is prevented from grazing with facility on

account of the shortness of the neck and the disproportionate length of

the legs. Their gait is remarkable; their general pace is described to

be a high, shambling, but very swift trot, the feet being lifted up very

high, and the hoofs clattering much during their motion; in their common

walk they lift their feet very high, and will without difficulty step

over a gate five feet high. The flesh of the moose is extremely sweet

and nourishing; the Indians say that they can travel three times further

after a meal of moose than after any other animal food. The tongues are

excellent; but the nose is said to be perfect marrow, and is considered

the greatest delicacy in Canada. The skin makes excellent buff, being

strong, soft, and light. The Indians dress the hide, and, after soaking

it for some time, stretch and render it supple by a lather of the brains

in hot water. They not only make their snow-shoes of the skin, but after

the chase cover the hull of their canoes with it, in which they return

home with the spoils of their chase. The hair on the neck, withers, and

hams of a full-grown elk is of considerable use in making mattresses and

saddles; and the palmated parts of the horns are further excavated by

the Indians, and converted into ladles and other culinary articles. An

ancient superstition has prevailed that the elk is naturally subject to

epilepsy, and that it finds its cure by scratching its ear with the hoof

until it draws blood; in consequence of this notion, the hoofs of the

elk form an article of the ancient Materia Medica. A piece of the hoof

was anciently set in a ring, and worn as a preservative against the

complaint above mentioned; sometimes the hoof was held in the patient's

hand, or applied to the pulse, to the left ear, or suspended from the

neck.--Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Cervus Alces; Lambert's _Canada_, vol.

i., p. 414.

Charlevoix speaks of the species having been almost entirely destroyed

even in his time (1721) by the indiscriminate carnage of the early

settlers.--Vol. v., p. 184. "Les Orignaux etoient partout a foison,

lorsque nous decouvrimes a pays, et ils pouvoient faire un objet pour le

commerce, une douceur pour la vie, si on les avoit mieux menages."--Vol.

v., p. 193.

La Hontan minutely describes the chase of the elk or moose deer, in

which laborious amusement he spent three months. Fifty-six elks were

killed by the party of savages who accompanied him. He says that the

flesh of the Orignal eats deliciously. He was assured by the savages

that in summer it would trot for three days and three nights without

intermission; it neither runs nor skips, he says, but its trot will

almost keep up with the running of a hart.--La Hontan, in Pinkerton,

vol. xiii., p. 284.

No. XXXIV.

_Ursus Americanus_, a species distinct from the black bear of Europe: it

has a long, pointed nose, and narrow forehead, the hair of a glossy

black color, smoother and shorter than that of the European kind, and is

generally smaller than the European bear. The brown bear, _Ursus

Arctos_, is also found in some of the northern parts of America. La

Hontan observed the difference of disposition between the brown and the

black bear; the latter, he says, "are extremely black, but not

mischievous, for they never attack one unless they be wounded or fired

upon." The reddish (_rougeatres_) bears are mischievous creatures, for

they fall fiercely upon the huntsmen, whereas the black fly from them.

The former sort are less, and more nimble than the latter. The flesh of

the black bear, and, above all, their feet, are very nice victuals. The

savages affirm that no flesh is so delicious as that of bears, and I

think they are right.[226]--La Hontan, in Pinkerton, vol. xiii., p. 288.

Charlevoix, vol. v., p. 172.

The _Ursus Maritimus_, or Polar Bear, is confined to the coldest parts

of the globe, being unknown except on the coasts of Hudson's Bay,

Greenland, and Spitzbergen. (Lambert says that they have been seen at

Newfoundland, and La Hontan saw one at a distance at Placentia.) This

animal grows to so great a size that the skin of some are thirteen feet

long. They are so fond of human flesh that they will greedily disinter

dead bodies; they will attack companies of armed men, and will even

board small vessels. The skins of the Polar Bear were formerly offered

by the hunters of the Arctic regions to the high altars of cathedral and

other churches, for the priest to stand on during the celebration of

mass in winter.--Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Ursus.

Captain Clarke agrees with La Hontan in ascribing fierceness of

disposition to the brown bear, and also speaks of it as "reddish," or of

a bay brown. "We had rather," says Captain Clarke, "encounter two

Indians than meet a single brown bear; their very track in the mud or

sand, which we have sometimes found 11 inches long and 7-1/4 wide,

exclusive of the talons, is alarming. The wonderful power of life which

they possess renders them dreadful: there is no chance of killing them

by a single shot, unless the ball goes through the brain." ... Six of

Captain Clarke's party, all good hunters, having sight of a large one

of the brown breed, came unperceived within forty paces of him; four of

them then fired, and each lodged a ball in his body, two of which went

directly through the lungs. The brave beast made at them instantly; as

he came near, the two men who had reserved their shot both wounded him;

one of the balls broke his shoulder, and retarded his motion for a

moment; before they could reload, he was so near that they all ran to

the river; two jumped into the canoe, the other four separated, hid

themselves among the willows, and, firing as fast as they could reload,

struck him repeatedly, but every shot seemed as if it only served to

guide him, and he pursued two of them so closely that at last they threw

aside their guns and pouches, and jumped down a perpendicular bank of

twenty feet into the water. Even this did not secure them; Bruin sprang

after them, and was within a few feet of the hindermost, when one of the

hunters from the shore shot him in the head. It was found that eight

balls had passed through him. Another brown bear, after being shot five

times through the lungs, and receiving four other wounds, swam half

across the river to a sand-bar. This creature measured 8 feet 7-1/2

inches from the nose to the extremity of the hind feet, and his heart

was as big as that of a large ox, his maw ten times larger. Another,

having been shot through the middle of the lungs, pursued his enemy for

half a mile, than traveled more than a mile in another direction, and

dug, as if for his grave, a hole for himself in the earth two feet deep

and five feet long, in which he was found by the hunters. The skin of

this beast was a burden for two men.--Captain Lewis and Clarke's

_Travels to the Source of the Missouri River_.

[Footnote 226: Bear's flesh is reckoned one of the greatest rarities

among the Chinese, insomuch that, as Du Halde informs us, the emperor

will send fifty or a hundred leagues into Tartary to procure it for a

great entertainment.]

No. XXXV.

"None of the foxes of North America possess the long-enduring speed of

the European kind, their strength appearing to be exhausted at the first

burst, after which they are easily overtaken by a mounted horseman. The

American cross fox (_Canis decussatus_) is probably nothing more than a

variety of the red fox of that country (_Canis fulvus_), though usually

of smaller size. Its fur is highly esteemed; a single skin, not many

years ago, being worth from four to five guineas, while that of the red

fox did not bring more than 15s. The black, or silver fox (_Canis

argentatus_) is a much rarer and still more valuable variety, of which

seldom more than four or five individuals are ever taken at any single

post throughout the year. It varies from a mixed or hoary hue to a

shining black, and La Hontan observes that, in his time, the skin of one

was worth its weight in gold. We know that it still brings six times the

price of any fur obtained in America."--H. Murray, vol. iii., p. 236.

No. XXXVI.

Charlevoix says that hares and rabbits are the same in America as in

Europe, except that their hinder feet are longer than their fore feet.

The rabbit, however, has never been found wild in any part of America.

La Hontan says that the Ossae are little animals like hares, and resemble

them in every thing excepting the ears and fore feet.

No. XXXVII.

Sciurus, a name formed of two Greek words, signifying shade and tail,

because the tail serves this animal for an umbrella. The Sciurus Niger,

Black Squirrel; the S. Vulpinus, Cat Squirrel; the S. Hudsonius,

Hudson's Bay Squirrel, and S. Striatus, Striped Squirrel, are all

natives of Canada, besides two species of flying squirrels. The S.

Cinereus, Gray Squirrel, is confined entirely to North America. It is

about half the size of a full-grown rabbit; the animal is of an elegant

pale gray, with the inside of the limbs and the under part of the body

white; the ears and tail are sometimes tinged with black. It is

frequently so numerous as to do incredible mischief to plantations of

corn; hence it is a proscribed animal, and 3_d._ per head given for

every one killed; at which rate, in the year 1749, L8000 were paid in

rewards.

The black squirrel, Weld says, is also peculiar to North America. It is

entirely of a shining black, except that the muzzle and the tail are

sometimes white; specimens have sometimes been seen with a white ring

round the neck. "In this year" (1796), Weld says, "the black squirrels

migrated from the south, from the territory of the United States. As if

conscious of their inability to cross a very wide piece of water, they

bent their course toward Niagara River, above the falls, and at its

narrowest and most tranquil part, crossed over into the British

territory. It was calculated that upward of 50,000 of them crossed the

river in the course of two or three days, and such great depredations

did they commit on arriving at the opposite side, that in one part of

the country the farmers deemed themselves very fortunate where they got

in as much as one third of their crops of corn. Some writers have

asserted that these animals can not swim, but that when they come to a

river, in migrating, each one provides itself with a piece of wood or

bark, upon which, when a favorable wind offers, they embark, spread

their bushy tails to catch the wind, and are thus wafted over to the

opposite side. Whether these animals do or do not sometimes cross in

this manner, I can not take upon me to say; but I can safely affirm that

they do not always cross so, for I have often shot them in the water

while swimming. Their tail is useful to them by way of rudder, and they

use it with great dexterity; owing to its being so light and bushy, the

greater part of it floats upon the water, and thus helps to support the

animal."--P. 330.

The S. Striatus, Striped Squirrel, is a native of the colder parts of

America and Asia, but has sometimes been found in Europe also. Its body

is yellowish, with five longitudinal stripes of a blackish color. It

differs from the major part of the squirrel tribe in its mode of life,

which rather resembles that of the dormouse. It resembles some of the

mouse tribe in this, that it is provided with cheek pouches for the

temporary reception of food, a peculiarity not to be found in any other

species of squirrel. It is not known whether this is the same species as

that described by La Hontan as "Suisse squirrels, little animals

resembling rats." The epithet Suisse is bestowed upon them in regard

that the hair which covers their body is streaked with black and white,

and resembles a Suisse's doublet; and these streaks make a ring on each

thigh that strongly resembles a Suisse's cap. He also describes "the

flying squirrels, as big as a large rat, and of a grayish white color.

They are as drowsy as those of the other species are watchful. They are

called flying squirrels, in regard that they fly from one tree to

another, by the means of a certain skin which stretches itself out in

the form of a wing when they make these little flights." The S.

Volucellae and the S. Hudsonius are the only species of the flying

squirrel found in America. The former is an animal of great beauty, and

is readily tamed, showing a considerable degree of attachment to its

possessor. It is naturally of a gregarious disposition, and may be seen

flying, to the number of ten or twelve together, from tree to

tree.--Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Sciurus. La Hontan, in Pinkerton, vol.

xiii., p. 352. Kalm, in Pink., vol. xiii., p. 480.

No. XXXVIII.

"The most interesting feature of the animal creation in the Western

Continent is, perhaps, the beaver (_Castor fiber_). These amphibia,

indeed, occur in the northern parts of Europe and Siberia, but on

comparatively so small a scale, both in number and size, that the beaver

may be viewed with propriety as specially American. There appears to be

absolutely no animal which makes so close an approach to human art and

intelligence. The beaver builds his habitation either in a pond or in

the channel of a river, converted into a pond by strong piles being laid

across. This operation involves the greatest display of ingenuity. A

tall tree is selected, and filed round with the teeth till it is

undermined and falls across the stream. It is then fastened down by

smaller trees and branches, brought often from a distance, and connected

with earth. In the little lake thus formed, the beaver rears his abode

to the height of two, three, or four stories, half above and half under

the water, and with an opening into both elements. Stones and earth, as

well as wood, are used in forming the walls, which, by the joint

operation of the feet and the tail, are brought into a mass so solid as

to be proof against the action of current, wind, and weather. The

outside is plastered in the neatest manner, the floor kept excessively

clean, strewed with box and fir. A large provision of food, consisting

of bark and leaves, is stored up for the winter. The beavers possess a

social and almost a moral existence. Each mansion contains from six to

thirty inhabitants, who live together in the greatest harmony, and

afford mutual aid and co-operation. From twelve to fourteen houses

united form a village, containing thus a population of 200 or 300.

"The flesh of these animals is much prized by the Indians and Canadian

voyageurs, especially when roasted in the skin after the hair has been

singed off. The enjoyment of this expensive luxury is of course

restrained as much as possible by the fur traders. The Iroquois are the

greatest beaver-catchers in Canada. Great injury has resulted from the

indiscriminate capture of old and young, and the too frequent trenching

of the same dams. It is known that in the year 1743 the amount of their

skins brought into the ports of London and Rochelle exceeded 150,000,

besides a considerable quantity introduced illicitly into Great Britain;

while in 1837, the importation into London, from more than four times

the extent of fur country formerly possessed, did not much exceed

800,000.

"There are two modes of taking the beaver--one by traps, which is the

easiest, and generally followed by single adventurers; the other is what

is termed trenching, or the ice chisel. On a beaver house being

discovered, all the canals leading from it are stopped up; then, with

the instrument above named, it is broken into, and the old animals

speared. The young are left untouched, and thus the breed remains

uninjured, while in trapping both old and young equally fall victims.

The company, therefore, have prohibited the latter operation in all

their settlements. The skins are divided into parchment, or those of the

old animals; and cub, or those of the young ones. The latter are the

finest, but, from their smaller size, not of equal value with the

others. They have, of course, become much rarer since their capture was

prohibited."--Murray's _America_, vol. ii., p. 306.

Kalm says that he ate beaver flesh, and thought it any thing but

delicious, as he had been told it was. He says that it must be boiled in

several waters from morning till noon to make it lose the bad taste it

has. Charlevoix says the same. The flesh is reckoned best when the

beaver has lived only on vegetables; when he has eaten fish it does not

taste well. It was a popular food among the French Roman Catholics, as

the only meat they could indulge in on fast days, his holiness, in his

system (Kalm says), having ranked the beaver among the fish. This

arrangement is attributed by Charlevoix to two numerous and learned

bodies in France. "Le Castor a ete juridiquement declare poisson par la

Faculte de Medicine de Paris, et en consequence de cette declaration la

Faculte de Theologie a decide qu'on pouvoit manger sa chair les jours

maigres. Par sa queue il est tout a fait poisson." La queue--the tail,

so remarkable in natural history, is thus described by Charlevoix, one

of the earliest observers of the habits of the beaver in North America:

"Elle est presque ovale, epaisse d'un pouce, et longue d'un pied. Elle

est couverte d'une peau ecailleuse dont les ecailles sont hexagones, ont

une demi ligne d'epaisseur, sur trois ou quatre lignes de longueur, et

sont appuyees les unes sur les autres comme toutes celles des poissons.

Une pellicule tres delicate leur sert de fond, et elles y sont

enchassees de maniere, qu'on peut aisement les en separer apres la mort

de l'animal.... Tous les vuides de leurs batimens sont remplis d'une

terre grasse si bien appliquee qu'il n'y passe pas une goute d'eau.

C'est avec leurs pattes que les Castors preparent cette terre, et leur

queue ne leur sert pas seulement de truelle pour maconner, mais encore

d'auge pour voiturer ce mortier, ce qu'ils font en se trainant sur leurs

pattes de derriere. Arrives au bord de l'eau, ils le prennent avec les

dents, et pour l'employer, ils se servent d'abord de leurs pattes,

ensuite de leur queue." Charlevoix applies the happy term of "une petite

Venise" to the habitations of a society of beavers. He says, that in

their erection "les proportions sont toujours exactement gardees. La

regle et le compas sont dans l'oeil du grand maitre des arts et des

sciences. On a observe que le cote du courant de l'eau est toujours en

tatus, et l'autre cote parfaitement a plomb. En un mot il seroit

difficile a nos meilleurs ouvriers de rien faire de plus solide et de

plus regulier." Both La Hontan and Charlevoix speak of the "Castor

terriers." "They are called by the savages 'the idle or lazy kind,' as

being expelled by the other beavers from the kennels in which these

animals are lodged, because they are unwilling to work. They make holes

in the earth, like rabbits or foxes, and resemble the other sort in

their figure, except that the hair is rubbed off many parts of their

body by their rubbing against the earth whenever they stir out from

their holes."--La Hontan, p. 307. Charlevoix adds, "Ils sont maigres,

c'est la fruit de leur paresse. Les Castors, ou Bievres d'Europe,

tiennent plus de ceux-ci que des autres; en effet M. Lemery dit qu'ils

se retirent dans les creux et dans les cavernes qui se rencontrent sur

les bords des rivieres surtout en Pologne. Il y en a aussi en Allemagne

le long de l'Ehre, et en France, sur le Rhone, l'Isere, et l'Oise. Ce

qui est certain c'est que nous ne voyons point dans les Castors

Europeens le merveilleux qui distingue si fort ceux du Canada.... Avant

la decouverte de l'Amerique on trouve dans les anciens titres des

Chapeliers de Paris des reglemens pour la fabrique des chapeaux Bievres,

or Bievre et Castor c'est absolument le meme animal, mais soit que le

Bievre Europeen soit devenu extremement rare, on que son poil n'eut pas

la meme bonte que celui du Castor Americain, on ne parle plus gueres que

de ce dernier.... Leur poil est de deux sortes par tout le corps,

excepte aux pattes, ou il n'y en a qu'un fort couet. Le plus grand est

long de huit a dix lignes, il est rude, gros, luisant, et c'est celui

qui donne la couleur a la bete. On n'en fait aucun usage. L'autre poil

est un duvet tres fin, fort epais, long tout au plus d'un pouce, et

c'est celui qu'on met en oeuvre; on l'appelloit autrefois en Europe,

Laine de Moscovie."--Charlevoix, vol. v., p. 147.

"In 1669 an attempt was made to employ the flix or down of the beaver in

the manufacture of cloths, flannels, stockings. Much more wool, however,

than flix was required, the hair of the beaver being so short, and this

prevented the manufacture being very profitable. It flourished for a

while, however, in an establishment in the Faubourg St. Antoine, near

Paris, but finally was given up on finding by experience that the stuffs

lost their dye when wet, and that, when dry again, they were harsh and

stiff as felts."--Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Beaver.

"In Captain Lewis and Clarke's Travels to the Source of the Missouri,"

it is mentioned that "the beavers who have not been invaded here by the

furrier are continually altering the course of the river. They dam up

the small channels of about twenty yards between the islands; when they

have effected this, their pond ere long becomes filled with mud and

sand; they then remove to another; this is in like manner filled up; and

thus the river, having its course obstructed, spreads on all sides, and

cuts the projecting points of lands into islands."--_Quarterly Review_,

vol. xii., p. 346.

Weld mentions, in 1796, that "the indiscriminate slaughter of beavers

had so much diminished their numbers that an annual deficiency of 15,000

beaver skins had for some years been observed in the number brought to

Montreal."--P. 551.

"One day a gentleman, long resident in this country, espied five young

beavers sporting in the water, leaping upon the trunk of a tree, pushing

one another off, and playing a thousand interesting tricks. He

approached softly, under cover of the bushes, and prepared to fire on

the unsuspecting creatures; but a nearer approach discovered to him such

a similitude between their gestures and the infantile caresses of his

own children that he threw aside his gun."--Franklin's _Journey to the

Polar Sea_, p. 91.

"The proprietor of one of the large quarries of gypsum on the

Shubenacadie showed me some wooden stakes, dug up a few days before by

one of his laborers from a considerable depth in a peat bog. His men

were persuaded that they were artificially cut by a tool, and were the

relics of aboriginal Indians; but, having been a trapper of beavers in

his younger days, he knew well that they owed their shape to the teeth

of these creatures. We meet with the skulls and bones of beavers in the

fens of Cambridgeshire, and elsewhere in England. May not some of the

old tales of artificially cut wood, occurring at great depths in peats

and morasses, which have puzzled many a learned antiquary, admit of the

like explanation?"--Lyell's _Travels in America_, vol. ii., p. 229.

No. XXXIX.

"The Hudson's Bay Company is now the only survivor of the numerous

exclusive bodies, to which almost every branch of British trade was at

one time subjected. The Northwest Company, after a long and furious

contest, destructive alike to the interests of both, and most

demoralizing to the savage aborigines, were at length obliged to yield

to their rivals; and, in consequence of their overstrained exertions,

they became involved beyond their capital. They obtained in 1821 an

honorable capitulation. On transferring all their property and means of

influence, the principal partners were admitted to shares in the

Hudson's Bay Company, who took the inferior officers into their service.

Thus these two concerns were united, with great advantage to the peace

of the fur countries, and perhaps to the permanent interests of the

trade. A great blank was indeed felt in the city where the partners had

resided, and where, according to Washington Irving, they had held huge

feasts and revels, such as are described to have taken place in Highland

castles. 'The hospitable magnates of Montreal, the lords of the lakes

and forests, have passed away,' and that city, as to the fur trade, has

sunk to a subordinate station.

"In the present case, there are some peculiar circumstances which plead

strongly in favor of the monopoly exercised by the Hudson's Bay Company.

For example, their trade is carried on throughout vast regions, free

from all control of law, and tenanted by savage races, who are easily

prompted to deeds of violence. The struggle with the Northwest Company

filled large tracts with outrage, often amounting to bloodshed. The

article, too, by far the most prized by those tribes, and which, amid an

eager rivalry, can not be prevented from coming into the market, is

spirits, the immoderate use of which is productive of the most dreadful

consequences. The company, by their present position, obtained the

opportunity, of which they have most laudably availed themselves, to

withdraw it altogether as an object of trade, merely giving an

occasional glass when the natives visit the factories. They have even

prohibited it from passing, under any pretext, to the northward of

Cumberland House, on the Saskatchawan, so that all the settlements

beyond form complete temperance societies. Another very important

specialty in their case consists in the nature of the commodities drawn

from this range of territory, namely, they are such as human industry

can not produce or multiply according to the demand. The wild animals,

which afford its staple of furs and skins, exist only in a limited

number, and being destined to give way in proportion as colonization

advances, will soon be thinned, or even utterly exterminated. Bands of

individual hunters, with no permanent interest in the country, capture

all they can reach, young and old indiscriminately, without any regard

to keeping up the breed. Thus the beaver, the most valuable of the

furred animals, has been nearly destroyed in Upper and Lower Canada, and

much diminished in the districts beyond the Rocky Mountains, which are

traversed by trapping parties from the States. During the competition of

the Northwest adventurers, a great part even of the wooded countries

suffered severely; but since the Hudson's Bay Company obtained the

entire control, they have carefully nursed the various animals, removing

their stations from the districts where they had become scarce, and

prohibiting all wasteful and destructive modes of capture. It may be

finally observed, that in this vast open territory the means of

excluding rivalry are so imperfect, that without good management and

liberal dealing it would be impossible to maintain their privilege. In

fact, Mr. Irving admits, that by the legitimate application of large

capital, by good organization, regular transmission of supplies, with

faithful and experienced servants, they have carried all before them,

even in the western territory, where they are exposed to a full

competition from the United States. Several associations from thence

have made very active efforts to supplant or rival them, but without

success."--Washington Irving's _Adventures of Captain Bonneville_, vol.

ii., p. 17, 19; vol. iii., p. 267, 272; H. Murray's _British America_,

vol. iii., p. 83.

No. XL.

"This species of rattlesnake is most commonly found between four and

five feet in length, and as thick as the wrist of a large man. Its body

approaches to a triangular form, the back bone rising higher than any

other part of the animal. It is not with the teeth which the rattlesnake

uses for ordinary purposes that it strikes its enemy, but with two long,

crooked fangs in the upper jaw, which point down the throat. When about

to use these fangs, it rears itself up as much as possible, throws back

its head, drops its under jaw, and, springing forward upon its tail,

endeavors to hook itself, as it were, upon its enemy. In order to raise

itself upon its tail, it coils itself up previously in a spiral line,

with the head in the middle. It can not spring further forward than

about half its own length. Tho body of the rattlesnake, finely

pulverized, after being dried to a cinder over the fire, and then

infused in a certain portion of brandy, is said to be a never-failing

remedy against the rheumatism. The liquor is taken inwardly, in the

quantity of a wine-glassful at once about three times a day. It is said

that one of the reasons why these creatures are decreasing so much in

the neighborhood of human habitations, is, that they are eaten by the

pigs."--Sir G. Simpson's _Journey round the World_, vol. i., p. 159;

Weld, p. 411.

"The rattle is usually about half an inch in breadth, one quarter of an

inch in thickness, and each joint about half an inch long. The joint

consists of a number of little cases of a dry, horny substance, inclosed

one within another; and not only the outermost of these little cases

articulates with the outermost case of the contiguous joint, but each

case, even to the smallest one of all, at the inside, is connected by a

sort of joint with the corresponding case in the next joint of the

rattle. The little cases or shells lie very loosely within one another,

and the noise proceeds from their dry and hard coats striking one

against the other. It is said that the animal joins a fresh joint to its

rattle every year. Of this, however, I have great doubts; for the

largest snakes are frequently found to have the fewest joints to their

rattles. A medical gentleman in the neighborhood of Newmarket had a

rattle in his possession which contained no less than thirty-two joints;

yet the snake from which it was taken scarcely measured five feet.

Rattlesnakes, however, of the same kind, and in the same part of the

country, have been found of a greater length with not more than ten

rattles."--Weld, p. 409.

"Man or animals bitten by the rattlesnake expire in extreme agony; the

tongue swells to an enormous size, the blood turns black, and, all the

extremities becoming cold, gangrene ensues, and is speedily succeeded by

death. The remedies in common use are the _Polygala seneca_ or

_Aristolochia serpentaria_, employed as a decoction. Sometimes

scarification, or cauterizing the wound with a burning iron, if

immediate in their application, is attended with success. The Indians'

favorite remedy is sucking the wound, which in a slight bite is

generally successful. Mr. Catesby, by traveling much among the Indians,

had frequent opportunities of seeing the direful effects of the bite

inflicted by these snakes. He seems to consider that the success of any

remedy is owing more to the force of nature or to the slightness of the

bite than to any other cause. He has known persons bitten to survive

without assistance for many hours; but where a rattlesnake with full

force penetrates with his deadly fangs into a vein or artery, inevitable

death ensues, and that, as he has often seen, in less than two minutes.

The Indians, for this reason, know their destiny directly they are bit,

and when they perceive it is mortal, apply no remedy, concluding all

efforts in vain. From experiments made in Carolina by Captain Hall, and

related in the Philosophical Transactions, it appears that a rattlesnake

of about four feet long, being fastened to a stake in the ground, bit

three dogs, the first of which died in less than a quarter of a minute;

the second, which was bitten a short time afterward, in about two hours,

in convulsions; and the third, which was bitten about half an hour

afterward, showed the visible effects of the poison in about three

hours, and died likewise. Four days after this, another dog was bitten,

which died in half a minute; and then another, which died in four

minutes. A cat which was bitten was found dead the next day. The

experiments having been discontinued some time, from want of subjects, a

common black-snake was procured, which was healthy and vigorous, and

about three feet long. It was brought to the rattlesnake, when they bit

each other, the black-snake biting the rattlesnake so as to make it

bleed. They were then separated, and in less than eight minutes the

black-snake died, while the rattlesnake, on the contrary, showed no

signs of indisposition, appearing as well as before. Lastly, in order to

try whether the rattlesnake could poison itself, it was provoked to bite

itself: the experiment succeeded, and the animal expired in less than

twelve hours."--Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Crotalus.

Charlevoix says that "La morsure du Serpent a Sonnettes est mortelle, si

on n'y remedie sur-le-champ; mais la Providence y a pourvu. Dans tous

les endroits, ou se rencontre ce dangereux reptile, il croit une plante

a laquelle on a donne le nom d'Herbe a Serpent a Sonnettes (Bidens

Canadensis) et dont la racine est un antidote sur contre le venin de cet

animal.... Il est rare que le serpent a sonnettes attaque les passans

qui ne lui cherchent point nuire. J'eu ai en un a mes pieds qui eut

assurement plus de peur que moi, car je ne l'apercus que quand il

fuyoit."--Charlevoix, vol. v., p. 235.

"Archdeacon Burnaby was told by a planter in Virginia that he had one

day provoked a rattlesnake to such a degree as to make it strike a small

vine which grew close by, and the vine presently drooped and

died."--Burnaby's _Travels in North America_, in Pinkerton, vol. xiii.,

p. 724.

"The rattlesnake has two fangs, which are concealed in a sheath, one at

each side of the upper jaw. They are curved in their shape, and their

point is as sharp as that of a common needle. They are hollow in the

center, and the roots of the fangs are connected with the poison bags.

These reptiles generally use only one fang at a time, and when they do

use it, they seize with their mouth the part which they intend to

poison, then perforate it deeply with the fang. At this moment the bag

contracts, and the deleterious fluid, which has such an enmity to the

blood, is injected into the very bottom of the wound, through a small

aperture in the under part of the fang, at a short distance from the

sharp point. Having effected his purpose, he withdraws the instrument,

and leaves his victim to his fate. He does not seem to feel pain at the

moment, and generally for the first five minutes he appears to be

perfectly well. At the end of this period, however, the ears begin to

droop; he seems giddy and uneasy; the lower extremities soon lose their

power; he falls on the ground; the pupils dilate; slight convulsions

come on; and the animal dies, generally, in about fifteen minutes from

the time that the poison had been injected into the wound. When we

examine the part immediately after death, we find that the poison has

completely destroyed the red color of the blood; and not only of this,

but for two inches all round the puncture, the muscular fibers, and even

the cellular substance, are as black as if they had been for hours in a

state of complete mortification. When the muriate of soda (common salt)

is immediately applied to the wound, it is a complete antidote. When an

Indian is bitten by a snake, he applies a ligature above the part, and

scarifies the wound to the very bottom; he then stuffs it with common

salt, and after this it soon heals, without producing any effect on the

general system. (The ligature may be the efficacious remedy,

intercepting the current of blood to the heart, and consequently

preventing the action of the poison upon that vital organ.) A rabbit,

under the influence of the rattlesnake poison, has been seen to drink a

saturated solution of muriate of soda and soon recover, while healthy

rabbits would not taste a drop of the same saline water."--Stevens's

_Observations on the Properties of the Blood_, p. 137, 315.

"I was with the Hon. Esquire Boyle when he made certain experiments of

curing the bite of vipers with certain East India snake-stones, that

were sent him by King James II., purposely to have him try their virtue

and efficacy. For that end he got some brisk vipers, and made them bite

certain pullets; he applied nothing to one of the pullets, and it died

within three minutes and a half; but I think they all recovered to whom

he applied the snake-stones, though they turned wonderful pale, their

combs drooped immediately, and the next morning all their flesh was

turned green to a wonder; nevertheless, they recovered by

degrees."--_Miscellanea Curiosa_, vol. iii., p. 345.

No. XLI.

"It is an unquestionable fact, that the copper-colored man can not

endure the spread of European civilization in his neighborhood, but

perishes in its atmosphere, without suffering from ardent spirits,

epidemics, or war, as if touched by a poisonous breath." Thus writes Mr.

Poeppig, a German naturalist, who has resided for some years in South

America; and he proceeds to compare the substitution of the one race for

the other, with the destruction of the first growth of low vegetation in

the recently-formed islands of the Pacific by the vigorous crop of

forest trees which succeeds it.--_Encyclopaedia_ of Erz and Gruber, art.

Indici.

Thus also writes the philosophical traveler, Mr. Darwin: "Besides

several evident causes of destruction, there appears to be some more

mysterious agency at work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems

to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the

Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we shall

find the same result. Nor is it the white man alone that thus acts the

destroyer. The Polynesian of Malay extraction has, in parts of the East

Indian Archipelago, thus driven before him the dark-colored native. The

varieties of man seem to act upon each other in the same way as

different species of animals, the stronger always extirpating the

weaker. It was melancholy at New Zealand to hear the fine, energetic

natives saying, 'They knew the land was doomed to pass from their

children.'"

Sir Richard Bourke writes thus to Lord Glenelg respecting New Zealand

(1837): "Disease and death prevail even among those natives who, by

their adherence to the missionaries, have received only benefit from the

English connection, and even the very children, who are reared under the

care of the missionaries, are swept off in a ratio which promises, at no

very distant period, to leave the country destitute of a single

aboriginal inhabitant. The natives are perfectly sensible of this

decrease, and when they contrast their own condition with that of the

English families, they conceive that the God of the English is removing

the aboriginal inhabitants to make room for them; and it appears to me

that this impression has produced among them a very general unhappiness

and indifference to life."

Sir Francis Head justified the sweeping measures of removal[227]

contemplated during his administration of Canada, by asserting his

belief in the same mysterious certainty of the aboriginals' extirpation.

"We may as well endeavor to make the setting sun stand still on the

summit of the Rocky Mountains, as attempt to arrest the final

extermination of the Indian race."--See Merivale's _Lectures on

Colonization_, No. 19 (delivered before the University of Oxford in

1839, 1840, and 1841), in which he objects to the truth of the facts on

which the above statements are founded, in so far as they are supposed

to involve any mysterious influence of the white over the copper-colored

races. "Perhaps I may venture to attribute some of the coloring (of the

foregoing statements) to that taste for fanciful analogies, and

speculations partaking of the mysterious, in which natural philosophers

are apt to indulge when they apply their knowledge to subjects not

immediately within their province. When we find one race of animals, or

one class of vegetation, extirpating another, there is nothing

inexplicable in the succession of cause and effect. The stronger

destroys the weaker by natural agencies: animals become the prey of

newly-imported indigenous ones, or their food is destroyed by the

multiplication of the latter: the seeds of one class of vegetables can

not spring where a stronger growth has established itself, and so forth.

What is there in these or similar processes analogous to the supposed

mysterious influence of the mere contact of one family of the human race

upon another? If it be true that the mere presence of a white population

is sufficient to cause the Red Indians or the Polynesians to dwindle and

decay, without any assignable agency of the one or the other, it must be

confessed that this is an anomaly in the laws of Providence utterly

unexplained by all our previous knowledge, wholly at variance with all

the other laws by which animal life and human society are

governed."--Vol. ii., p. 206.

[Footnote 227: Three millions of fertile acres were to be resumed;

several thousand Indians were persuaded to relinquish them, and migrate

to a large island (Manitoulin) on Lake Huron. "The greatest kindness,"

says Sir F. Head, "which we can perform to these intelligent and

simple-minded people, is to remove and fortify them as much as possible

from all communication with the whites."--_Returns_, 1839, p. 145. These

are nearly the same arguments which have uniformly been urged in the

United States, and would justify incessant acts of arbitrary removal,

such as would render all improvement impossible.]

No. XLII.

"The small-pox proves almost always fatal to the Red Indian, his

hardened skin preventing the appearance of the eruption. In Abyssinia,

where this dreadful disease is supposed to have originated, when any

person is seized with it, the neighbors surround the house and set it on

fire, consuming it with its miserable inhabitants. The American Indians

regard the contagion with almost as much horror. The Mahas had been a

powerful and warlike tribe till now, when they saw their strength wasted

by a malady which they could neither resist nor prevent; they became

frantic; they set fire to their village, and many of them killed their

wives and children, to spare them the sufferings of disease, and that

they might all go together to the land of souls."--Lewis and Clarke's

_Travels to the Source of the Missouri_.

Lambert says, "Many nations have been totally exterminated by the

small-pox. When I was in Canada in the spring of 1808, a village of

Mississagas, residing near Kingston, was nearly depopulated by the

small-pox; not more than twenty escaped of five hundred."

"Repeated efforts have been made, and so far, generally, as the tribes

have ever had the disease (or, at all events, within the recollection of

those who are now living in the tribes), the government agents (of the

United States) have succeeded in introducing vaccination as a

protection; but among the tribes in their wild state, who have not yet

suffered from the disease, very little success has been met with in the

attempt to protect them, on account of their superstitions, which have

generally resisted all attempts to introduce vaccination. While I was on

the Upper Missouri, several surgeons were sent into the country with the

Indian agents, where I several times saw the attempt made without

success. They have perfect confidence in the skill of their own

physicians, until the disease has made one slaughter in their tribe, and

then, having seen white men among them protected by it, they are

disposed to receive it, before which they can not believe that so minute

a puncture in the arm is going to protect them from so fatal a disease;

and as they see white men so earnestly urging it, they decide that it

must be some new trick of the pale faces, by which they are to gain some

new advantage over them, and they stubbornly and successfully resist

it."--Catlin, vol. ii., p. 258.

From the accounts brought to New York in the fall of 1838 by Messrs.

M'Kenzie, Mitchell, and others, from the Upper Missouri, and with whom I

conversed on the subject, it seems that in the summer of that year the

small-pox was accidentally introduced among the Mandans by the fur

traders, and that in the course of two months they all perished except

some thirty or forty, who were taken as slaves by the Riccarees, an

enemy living two hundred miles below them, and who worked up and took

possession of their village soon after their calamity, taking up their

residence in it, it being a better built village than their own; and

from the lips of one of the traders who had more recently arrived from

there, I had the following account of the remaining few, in whose

destruction was the final termination of this interesting and once

numerous tribe:

"'The Riccarees,' he said, 'had taken possession of the village after

the disease had subsided, and, after living some months in it, were

attacked by a large party of their enemies, the Sioux, and while

fighting desperately in resistance, in which the Mandan prisoners had

taken an active part, the latter had concerted a plan for their own

destruction, which was effected by their simultaneously running through

the pickets on to the prairie, calling out to the Sioux (both men and

women) to kill them, "that they were Riccaree dogs, that their friends

were all dead, and they did not wish to live;" that they here wielded

their weapons as desperately as they could, to excite the fury of their

enemy, and that they were thus cut to pieces and destroyed.'

"The accounts given by two or three white men, who were among the

Mandans during the ravages of this frightful disease, are most

appalling, and actually too heart-rending and disgusting to be recorded.

The disease was introduced into the country by the Fur Company's steamer

from St. Louis, which had two of their crew sick with the disease when

it approached the Upper Missouri, and imprudently stopped to trade at

the Mandan village, which was on the bank of the river, where the chiefs

and others were allowed to come on board, by which means the disease got

ashore.

"I am constrained to believe that the gentlemen in charge of the steamer

did not believe it to be the small-pox; for if they had known it to be

such, I can not conceive of such imprudence as regarded their own

interests in the country, as well as the fate of these poor people, by

allowing their boat to advance into the country under such

circumstances.

"It seems that the Mandans were surrounded by several war parties of

their more powerful enemies, the Sioux, at that unlucky time, and they

could not, therefore, disperse upon the plains, by which many of them

could have been saved; and they were necessarily inclosed within the

pickets of the village, where the disease in a few days became so very

malignant, that death ensued in a few hours after its attacks; and so

slight were their hopes when they were attacked, that nearly half of

them destroyed themselves with their knives, with their guns, and by

dashing their brains out by leaping head foremost from a thirty-foot

ledge of rocks in front of their village. The first symptom of the

disease was a rapid swelling of the body, and so very virulent had it

become, that very many died in two or three hours after their attack,

and that in many cases without the appearance of the disease upon the

skin. Utter dismay seemed to possess all classes and all ages, and they

gave themselves up in despair as entirely lost. There was but one

continual crying and howling, and praying to the Great Spirit for his

protection, during the nights and days; and there being but few living,

and those in too appalling despair, nobody thought of burying the dead,

whose bodies, whole families together, were left in horrid and loathsome

piles in their own wigwams, with a few buffalo robes, &c., thrown over

them, there to decay, and be devoured by their own dogs. That such a

proportion of their community as that above mentioned should have

perished in so short a time, seems yet to the reader an unaccountable

thing; but, in addition to the causes just mentioned, it must be borne

in mind that this frightful disease is every where far more fatal among

the native than in civilized population, which may be owing to some

extraordinary susceptibility, or, I think, more probably, to the exposed

lives they live, leading more directly to fatal consequences. In this,

as in most of their diseases, they ignorantly and imprudently plunge

into the coldest water while in the highest state of fever, and often

die before they have the power to get out.

"Some have attributed the unexampled fatality of this disease among the

Indians to the fact of their living entirely on animal food; but so

important a subject for investigation I must leave for sounder

judgments than mine to decide. They are a people whose constitutions

and habits of life enable them most certainly to meet most of its ills

with less dread, and with decidedly greater success, than they are met

in civilized communities; and I would not dare to decide that their

simple meat diet was the cause of their fatal exposure to one frightful

disease, when I am decidedly of opinion that it has been the cause of

their exemption and protection from another, almost equally destructive,

and, like the former, of civilized introduction.

"During the season of the ravages of the Asiatic cholera, which swept

over the greater part of the Western country and the Indian frontier, I

was a traveler through those regions, and was able to witness its

effects; and I learned from what I saw, as well as from what I have

heard in other parts since that time, that it traveled to and over the

frontiers, carrying dismay and death among the tribes on the borders in

many cases, so far as they had adopted the civilized modes of life, with

its dissipations, using vegetable food and salt; but wherever it came to

the tribes living exclusively on meat, and that without the use of salt,

its progress was suddenly stopped. I mention this as a subject which I

looked upon as important to science, and therefore one on which I made

careful inquiries; and, so far as I have learned, along that part of the

frontier over which I have since passed, I have, to my satisfaction,

ascertained that such became the utmost limits of this fatal disease in

its travel to the west, unless where it might have followed some of the

routes of the fur traders, who, of course, have introduced the modes of

civilized life.

"From the trader who was present at the destruction of the Mandans I had

many most wonderful incidents of this dreadful scene, but I dread to

recite them. Among them, however, there is one that I must briefly

describe, relative to the death of that noble _gentleman_, of whom I

have already said so much, and to whom I became so much attached,

_Mah-to-to-pa_, or 'the Four Bears.' This fine fellow sat in his wigwam

and watched every one of his family die about him, his wives and his

little children, after he had recovered from the disease himself, when

he walked out round the village, and wept over the final destruction of

his tribe; his braves and warriors, whose sinewy arms alone he could

depend on for a continuance of their existence, all laid low; when he

came back to his lodge, where he carried his whole family in a pile,

with a number of robes, and wrapping another around himself, went out

upon a hill at a little distance, where he laid several days, despite

all the solicitations of the traders, resolved to _starve_ himself to

death. He remained there till the sixth day, when he had just strength

enough to creep back to the village, when he entered the horrid gloom of

his own wigwam, and, laying his body alongside of the group of his

family, drew his robe over him, and died on the ninth day of his fatal

abstinence.

"So have perished the friendly and hospitable Mandans, from the best

accounts I could get; and although it may be _possible_ that some few

individuals may yet be remaining, I think it is not probable; and one

thing is certain, even if such be the case, that, as a nation, the

Mandans are extinct, having no longer an existence.

"There is yet a melancholy part of the tale to be told, relating to the

ravages of this frightful disease in that country on the same occasion,

as it spread to other contiguous tribes, to the Minatarrees, the

Knisteneaux, the Blackfeet, the Chayennes, and Crows, among whom 25,000

perished in the course of four or five months, which most appalling

facts I got from Major Pilcher, now Superintendent of Indian Affairs at

St. Louis, from Mr. M'Kenzie, and others."--Catlin's _American Indians_,

vol. ii., p. 257.

No. XLIII.

"In man the coloring matter seems to be deposited in the dermoidal

system by the roots or the bulbs of the hair,[228] and all sound

observations prove that the skin varies in color from the action of

external stimuli on individuals, and is not hereditary in the whole

race. The Eskimoes of Greenland, and the Laplanders, are tanned by the

influence of the air, but their children are born white. We will not

decide on the changes which Nature may produce in a space of time,

exceeding all historical traditions. Reason stops short in these matters

when no longer under the guidance of experience and analogy. The nations

that have a white skin begin their cosmogony by white men; according to

them, the negroes and all tawny people have been blackened or embrowned

by the excessive heat of the sun. This theory, adopted by the Greeks,

though not without contradiction (Onesicritus apud Strabon, lib. xv., p.

983), has been propagated even to our own times. Buffon has repeated, in

prose, what Theodectes had expressed in verse two thousand years before,

'that the nations wear the livery of the climate they inhabit.' If

history had been written by black nations, they would have maintained

what even Europeans have recently advanced (Prichard's _Researches into

the Physical History of Man, 1813_), p. 233, 239, that man was

originally black, or of a very tawny color, and that he has whitened in

some races from the effect of civilization and progressive debilitation,

as animals in a state of domestication pass from dark to lighter colors.

I shall here cite the authority of Ulloa. This learned man has seen the

Indians of Chili, of the Andes, of Peru, of the burning coasts of

Panama, and those of Louisiana, situated under the northern temperate

zone. He had the good fortune to live at a time when theories were less

numerous, and, like me, he was struck at seeing the native under the

line as much bronzed as brown, in the cold climate of the Cordilleras as

in the plains. Where differences of color are observed, they depend on

the race."--Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_, vol. iii., p. 298.

[Footnote 228: According to the interesting researches of Mr. Gaultier,

on the _Organization of the Human Skin_, p. 57. John Hunter observes,

that in several animals, the coloration of the hair is independent of

that of the skin.

Blumenbach informs us how climate operates in modifying the color of the

skin. He states that the proximate cause of the dark color of the

integuments in an abundance of carbon, secreted by the skin with

hydrogen, precipitated and fixed in the rete mucosum by the contact of

the atmospheric oxygen.--_De Variet._, p. 124.

If Voltaire is to be believed, no well-informed person formerly passed

by Leyden without seeing a part of the black membrane (the reticulum

mucosum) of a negro, dissected by the celebrated Ruysell. Their error

is, however, now universally admitted. The "rete mucosum" has been

discovered to be nothing but the latest layer of epidermis, the inner

surface of which is being continually renewed as the exterior is worn

away, just like the bark of a tree. There is no distinct coloring layer,

it appears, either in the fair or the dark-skinned races, the peculiar

hue of the latter depending upon the presence of coloring matter in the

cells of the epidermis itself. Color, therefore, is not even _skin

deep_, for it does not reach the true skin, being entirely confined to

the epidermis or scarf skin.]

No. XLIV.

"The Indian and the negro races, both fated, as it seems, to yield the

supremacy to the _whites_, present in every other particular a curious

contrast to each other. The red man appears to have received from nature

every quality which contributes to greatness, except--I have no other

word for it--_tamability_; he has shown in many remarkable instances

intellectual capacity, talents for government, eloquence, energy, and

self-command.... There is something noble and striking--something that

commands respect and admiration, in the Indian character, irreconcilable

though it be with advanced civilization and the operation of Christian

influences. The negro, on the contrary, has precisely what the Indian

wants; he is a domestic animal.... The Indian avoids his conqueror; the

negro bows at his feet. The Indian loves the independence and privations

of his solitude better than all the flesh-pots of Egypt; the negro, if

left to himself, is helpless and miserable: he must have society and

sensual pleasures; if he be allowed to eat and drink well, to dance, to

sing, and to make love, he seems to have no further or higher

aspirations, and to care nothing for the degradation of his race. With

the single exception of Toussaint, I know no instance of a negro

distinguishing himself in politics, or arms, or letters; and though I

make every allowance for the difficulties and obstacles to his doing so

which his situation imposes on him, I can not allow that these account

for the fact that, notwithstanding the excellent education which many

negroes receive, and the stimulus afforded by constant intercourse with

whites, not one of them has yet, either here or in the West Indies, with

the above-named exception, taken the lead among his countrymen, or made

a name for himself. And this natural superiority of the Indian is,

perhaps unconsciously, recognized and illustrated in a singular manner

by the white man, in the different feelings which he exhibits upon the

subject of amalgamation with the two races. Some of the best families in

the United States are _proud_ to trace their origin to Indian chiefs

(_e.g._, the Randolphs of Virginia boast that they came of the lineage

of Powhatan); and I have myself met with half-breeds who were considered

(and most justly) in every respect equal in estimation with full-blooded

whites. It is needless to observe, that with respect to the negroes, the

precise converse is the case. _Caeteris paribus_, we seem naturally to

receive the red man as our equal."--Godley's _Letters from America_,

vol. i., p. 153.

No. XLV.

"These islands were partly discovered by Behring in 1741, and the rest

at several periods since his time. The most considerable of them amount

to forty in number, and they may be justly considered as a branch of the

Kamtskadale Mountains continued in the sea. The three small islands,

known by the names of Attak, Shemya, and Semitshi, with a few others,

were denominated by the Russians Aleutskie Ostrova, because a bold rock

in the language of these parts is called 'Aleut.' In the sequel this

name was extended to the whole chain, though a part of it is named the

Andreanoffskoi, and the rest, lying further toward America, the Fox

Islands. The survey of these islands, more anciently discovered by the

Russians, and of the adjacent parts of the two continents, was made by

Captain Cook in his third voyage, in 1778. If the Russians, then, can

deservedly claim the priority of the discovery, no one can withhold from

the adventurous and persevering Captain Cook the glory and the merit of

having fixed the distance of the two continents and their respective

extent, to the east for Asia, and to the west for North

America."--Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, art. Aleutian Islands.

No. XLVI.

"Almost every where in the New World we recognize a multiplicity of

forms and tenses in the verb, an artificial industry to indicate

before-hand, either by inflection of the personal pronouns, which form

the terminations of the verb, or by an intercalated _suffix_, the nature

and the relation of its object and its subject, and to distinguish

whether the object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the

feminine gender, simple, or in complex number. This multiplicity

characterizes the rudest American languages. Astarloa reckons, in like

manner, in the grammatical system of the Biscayan, 206 forms of the

verb. Strange conformity in the structure of languages among races of

men so different, and on spots so distant.

"Those languages, the principal tendency of which is inflection, excite

less the curiosity of the vulgar than those which seem formed by

aggregation. In the first, the elements of which words are composed, and

which are generally reduced to a few letters, are no longer

distinguished. These elements, when isolated, exhibit no meaning; the

whole is assimilated and mixed together. The American languages, on the

contrary, are like complicated machines, the wheels of which are

exposed. The artifice is visible--I mean the industrious mechanism of

their construction. We seem to be present at their formation, and we

should state them to be of very recent origin, if we did not recollect

that the human mind follows imperturbably an impulse once given; that

nations enlarge, improve, and repair the grammatical edifice of their

language according to a plan already determined; finally, that there are

countries where the languages of all the institutions and the arts have

remained stereotyped, as it were, during the lapse of ages. The highest

degree of intellectual development has been hitherto found among nations

which belong to the Indian and Pelasgic branch. The languages, formed

principally by aggregation, seem themselves to oppose obstacles to the

improvement of the mind. They are, in fact, unfurnished with that rapid

movement, that interior life, to which the inflection of the root is

favorable, and which gives so many charms to works of the imagination.

Let us not, however, forget that a people celebrated in the remotest

antiquity, from whom the Greeks themselves borrowed knowledge, had

perhaps a language, the construction of which recalls involuntarily that

of the language of America. What a scaffolding of little monosyllabic

and dissyllabic forms is added to the verb and to the substantive in the

Coptic language!"--Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_, vol. iii., p. 273.

In his "Researches," Humboldt observes: "We find in the New Continent

languages, some of which, as the Greenland, the Cora, the Tamanac, the

Totonac, and the Quichua (_Archiv. fuer Ethnographie_, b. i., s. 345;

Vaters, s. 206), display a richness of grammatical forms which we trace

nowhere in the Old World, except at Congo, and among the Biscayans, who

were the remains of the ancient Cantabrians. But, amid these marks of

civilization (referring to the Aztec nation), and this progressive

perfection of language, it is remarkable that no people of America had

attained that analysis of sounds which leads to the most admirable, we

might almost say the most miraculous of all inventions, an alphabet. We

are led to think that the progressive perfection of symbolic signs, and

the facility with which objects are painted, had prevented the

introduction of letters ... _not_ the case in Egypt."

Chateaubriand says that the Jesuits have left important works relative

to the language of the Canadian savage. Father Chaumont, who had lived

fifty years among the Hurons, composed a grammar of their language. To

Father Rasles, who spent ten years in an Abenakis village, we are

indebted for valuable documents. A French and Iroquois dictionary--a new

treasure for philologists--is finished. There is also a manuscript

dictionary--Iroquois and English--but, unluckily, the first volume is

lost.

"Les trois langues, Huronne, Algonquine et Siou sont les langues meres

du Canada. Ils ont tous les caracteres des langues primitives, et il est

certain qu'elles n'ont pas une origine commune. La seule prononciation

suffisoit pour le pronom. Le Siou sifle en parlant, le Huron n'a point

de lettre labiale, qu'il ne scanroit prononcer, parle du gosier et

aspire presque toutes les syllabes; l'Algonquin prononce avec plus de

douceur, et parle plus naturellement. Je n'ai pu rien apprendre de

particulier de la premiere de ces trois langues; mais nos anciens

missionnaires ont beaucoup travaille sur les deux autres, et sur les

principales de leurs dialectes: voici ce que j'en ais oui dire aux plus

habiles.

"La langue Huronne est d'une abondance, d'une energie, et d'une

noblesse, qu'on ne trouve peut-etre reunies dans aucune des plus belles,

que nous connoissons, et ceux, a qui elle est propre, quoiqu'ils ne

soient plus qu'une poignee d'hommes, ont encore dans l'ame une

elevation, qui s'accorde bien mieux avec la majeste de leur langage,

qu'avec le triste etat, ou ils sont reduits. Quelques uns ont cru y

trouver des rapports avec l'Hebreu; d'autres en plus grand nombre ont

pretendu qu'elle avoit la meme origine que celle des Grecs; mais rien

n'est plus frivole que les preuves, qu'ils en apportent. La langue

Algonquine n'a pas autant de force, que la Huronne, mais elle a plus de

douceur et d'elegance. Toutes deux ont une richesse d'expressions, une

variete de tones, une propriete de termes, une regularite, qui etonnent:

mais ce qui surprend encore davantage, c'est que parmi des Barbares

qu'on ne voit point s'etudier a bien parler, et qui n'ont jamais eu

l'usage de l'ecriture, il ne s'introduit point un mauvais mot, un terme

impropre, une construction vicieuse, et que les enfans memes en

conservent, jusque dans le discours familier, toute la purete.

D'ailleurs, la maniere dont ils animent tout se qu'ils disent, ne laisse

aucun lieu de douter qui ne comprennent toute la valeur de leur

expressions, et toute la beaute de leur langue. Dans le Huron tout se

conjugue; un certain artifice, que je ne vous expliquerois pas bien, y

fait distinguer des verbes, les noms, les pronoms, les adverbes, &c. Les

verbes simples ont une double conjugaison, l'une absolue, l'autre

reciproque. Les troisiemes personnes ont les deux genres, car il n'y en

a que deux dans ces langues; a scavoir, le genre noble, et le genre

ignoble. Pour ce qui est des nombres et des tems, on y trouve les memes

differences que dans le Grec. Par exemple, pour raconter un voyage, on

s'exprime autrement si on la fait par terre, ou si on l'a fait par eau.

Les verbes actifs se multiplient autant de fois, qu'il y a de choses,

qui tombent sous leur action; comme le verbe, qui signifie _Manger_,

varie autant de fois, qu'il y a de choses comestibles. L'action

s'exprime autrement a l'egard d'une chose inanimee: ainsi _voir un

homme_, et _voir une pierre_, ce sont deux verbes. Se servir d'une

chose, qui appartient a celui qui s'en sert, ou a celui a qui on parle,

ce sont autant de verbes differens.

"Il y a quelque chose de tout cela dans la langue Algonquine, mais la

maniere n'en est pas la meme, et je ne suis nullement en etat de vous en

instruire. Cependant, madame, si du peu, que je viens de vous dire, il

s'ensuit que la richesse et la variete de ces langues les rendent

extremement difficiles a apprendre, la disette et la sterilite ou elles

sont tombees ne causent pas un moindre embarras. Car, comme les peuples,

quand nous avons commence a les frequenter, ignoroient presque tout ce

dont ils n'avoient pas l'usage, ou qui ne tomboit pas sous leurs sens,

ils manquoient de termes pour les exprimer, ou les avoient laisse tomber

dans l'oubli."--Charlevoix, tom. v., p. 288.

The variety of dialects proves the little communication held between the

different tribes of savages, a necessary consequence of their living by

the chase, and requiring extensive hunting-grounds.

"We need only," says Acosta (_De Procur. Indorum Salut._), "cross a

valley for hearing another jargon."

No. XLVII.

"The following are the results of the most recent researches on the

lines of fortifications, and the tumuli found between the Rocky

Mountains and the chain of the Alleganies. The fortifications chiefly

occupy the space between the great lakes of Canada, the Mississippi and

the Ohio, from the fourty-fourth to the thirty-ninth degree of latitude.

Those which advance most toward the northeast are on the Black River,

one of the tributary streams of Lake Ontario. The most remarkable

ancient fortifications in the State of Ohio are, 1st. Newark, a very

regular octagon, containing an area of 32 acres, and connected with a

circular circumvallation of 16 acres; the eight great doors of the

octagon are defended by eight works placed before each opening. 2d.

Perryvale County, numerous walls, not in clay, but stone. 3d. Marietta,

two great squares with twelve doors; the walls of earth are 21 feet

high, and 42 feet at their base. 4th. Circleville, a square with eight

doors, and eight small works for their defense connected with a circular

fort, surrounded by two walls and a moat. 5th. Point Creek, at the

confluence of the Scioto and the Ohio; the fortifications are partly

irregular; one of them contains 62 acres. 6th. Portsmouth, opposite

Alexandria; vast ruins, disposed on parallel lines, denote that this

spot heretofore contained a numerous population. 7th. Little Miami and

Cincinnati, a wall of 7 feet high and 6300 toises long. All these square

forts are placed as exactly to the east as the Egyptian and Mexican

pyramids; when the forts have only one opening, it is directed toward

the rising sun. The walls of these lines of fortification are most

frequently of earth, but two miles from Chilicothe, in the State of

Ohio, we find a wall constructed in stone, from 12 to 15 feet high, and

from 5 to 8 feet thick, forming an inclosure of 80 acres. It is not yet

precisely known how far those works extend to the west, along the course

of the Missouri and the River La Plata; but they are not found on the

north of the Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Michigan, neither do they pass the

chain of the Alleganies. Some circumvallations discovered on the banks

of the Chenango, near Oxford, in the State of New York, may be

considered as a very remarkable exception. We must not confound these

military monuments with the mounds or _tumuli_ containing thousands of

skeletons of a stunted race of men, scarcely 5 feet high. These mounds

increase in number from the north toward the south; Mr. Brackenridge

thinks there are nearly 3000 tumuli, from 20 to 100 feet high, between

the mouth of the Ohio, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Rio San

Francisco, and that the number of skeletons they contain indicate how

considerable must have been the population heretofore of those

countries. These monuments, considered as the places of sepulture of

great communes, are most frequently situated at the confluence of

rivers, and on the most favorable points for trade. The base of the

tumuli is round, or of an oval form; they are generally of a conical

form, and sometimes flattened at the summit, as if intended to serve for

sacrifices, or other ceremonies to be seen by a great mass of people at

once. Some of those monuments are two or three stories high, and

resemble in their form the Mexican _Teocallis_, and the pyramids with

steps of Egypt and Western Asia. Some of the tumuli are constructed of

earth, and some of stones heaped together. Hatchets have been found on

them, together with painted pottery, vases, and ornaments of brass, a

little iron, silver in plates (near Marietta), and perhaps gold (near

Chilicothe). Some of these mounds are only a few feet high, and are

placed at the center or in the neighborhood of the circular

circumvallations; they were either tribunes for haranguing the assembled

people, or places of sacrifice, and where they are only from 20 to 25

feet high, they may be considered as observatories erected to discover

the movements of a neighboring enemy. The great tumuli, from 80 to 100

feet high, are most frequently insulated, and sometimes seem to be of

the same age as the fortifications to which they are linked. The latter

merit particular attention: I know nowhere any thing that resembles them

either in South America or the ancient continent. The regularity of the

polygon and circular forms, and the small works intended to cover the

doors of the building, are, above all, remarkable. We know not whether

they were inclosures of property, walls of defense against enemies, or

intrenched camps, as in Central Asia. The custom of separating the

different quarters of a town by circumvallations is observed alike in

the ancient Tenochleitian and the Peruvian town of Chimu, the ruins of

which I examined, between Truxillo and the coast of the South Sea. The

_tumuli_ are less characteristic constructions, and may have belonged to

nations who had no communication with one another; they cover both

Americas, the north of Asia, and the whole east of Europe, and, it is

said, are still constructed by the Omawhaws of the River Plata. The

skulls contained in the _tumuli_ of the United States furnish means of

recognizing, almost with certainty, to what degree the race of men by

whom they were raised differ from the Indians who now inhabit the same

countries. Mr. Mitchell believes that the skeletons of the caverns of

Kentucky and Tennessee 'belong to the Malays, who came by the Pacific

Ocean to the western coast of America, and were destroyed by the

ancestors of the present Indians, and who were of Tartar race (Mongul).'

With respect to the tumuli and the fortifications, the same learned

writer supposes, with Mr. De Witt Clinton, that those monuments are the

works of Scandinavian nations, who, from the eleventh to the fourteenth

century, visited the coast of Greenland, Newfoundland, or Vinland, or

Drageo, and a part of the continent of North America. If this

hypothesis be well founded, the skulls found in the _tumuli_ ought to

belong, not to the American, Mongul, or Malay race, but to a race

vulgarly called Caucasian.... Did the nations of the Mexican race, in

their migrations to the south, send colonies toward the east, or do the

monuments of the United States pertain to the Autochthone nations?

Perhaps we must admit in North America, as in the ancient world, the

simultaneous existence of several centers of civilization, of which the

mutual relations are not known in history. The very civilized nations of

New Spain, the Tolteques, the Azteques, and the Chichimeques, pretended

to have issued successively, from the sixth to the twelfth century, from

three neighboring countries situated toward the north. These nations

spoke the same language, they had the same cosmogonic fables, the same

propensity for the sacerdotal congregations, the same hieroglyphic

paintings, the same divisions of time, the same taste (Chinese and

Japanese) for noting and registering every thing. The names given by

them to the towns built in the country of Analmae; were those of the

towns they had abandoned in their ancient country. The civilization on

the Mexican table-land was regarded by the inhabitants themselves as the

copy of something which had existed elsewhere, as the reflection of the

primitive civilization of Aztlan. Where, it may be asked, must be placed

that parent land of the colonies of Anahuac, that _officinum gentium_

which, during five centuries, sends nations toward the south who

understand each other without difficulty, and recognize each other for

relations? Asia, north of Amour, where it is nearest America, is a

barbarous country, and in supposing (which is geographically possible) a

migration of southern Asiatics by Japan, Tarakay (Tchoka), the Kurile

and Aleutian Isles, from southwest toward the northeast (from 40 to 55

degrees of latitude), how can it be believed that in so long a

migration, on a way so easily intercepted, the remembrance of the

institutions of the parent country could have been preserved with so

much force and clearness? The cosmogonic fables, the pyramidal

constructions, the system of the calendar, the animals of the tropics

found in the catasterim of days, the convents and congregations of

priests, the taste for statistic enumerations, the annals of the empire

held in the most scrupulous order, lead us toward Oriental Asia, while

the lively remembrances of which we have just spoken, and the peculiar

physiognomy which Mexican civilization presents in so many other

respects, seem to indicate the antique existence of an empire in the

north of America, between the thirty-sixth and forty-second degrees of

latitude. We can not reflect on the military monuments of the United

States without recollecting the first country of the civilized nations

of Mexico. It is in rising to more general historical considerations, in

examining with more care than has been hitherto done the languages and

the osteologic conformation of different tribes, in exploring the

immense country bounded by the Alleganies and the coast of the Western

Ocean, that means will be obtained of throwing light on a problem so

worthy of exercising the sagacity of historians.... According to the

traditions collected by Mr. Heckewelder, the country east of the

Mississippi was heretofore inhabited by a powerful nation, of gigantic

stature, called Alleghewi, and which gave its name to the Alleganian

mountains. The Alleghewis were more civilized than any of the other

tribes found in the northern climates by the Europeans of the sixteenth

century. They inhabitated towns founded on the banks of the Mississippi,

and the fortifications that now excite the astonishment of travelers

were constructed by them, in order to defend themselves against the

Delawares, who came from the west, and were allied at that period with

the Iroquois. It may be supposed that this invasion of a barbarous

people changed the political and moral state of those countries. The

Alleghewis were vanquished by the Delawares after a long struggle. In

their flight toward the south they gathered together the bones of their

relations in separate _tumuli_; they descended the Mississippi, and what

became of them is not known.... The lines of fortification of a

prodigious length observed by Captain Lewis on the banks of the Missouri

sufficiently prove that the ancient habitation of the Alleghewis, that

powerful people which I am inclined to regard as being of Tolteque or

Azteque race, extended far to the west of the Mississippi, toward the

foot of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Nuttall, in going up the Arkansas to

Cadron, was informed of the existence of an ancient intrenchment,

resembling a triangular fort. The Arkansas assert that it is the work of

a _white_ and civilized people, whom, when they arrived in this country,

their ancestors fought and vanquished, not by force, but cunning. They

attribute, also, to a more ancient and polished people than themselves,

the monuments of rough stones heaped up on the summit of the hills.

Other monuments, not less curious, are the commodious roads of immense

length which the natives have traced from time immemorial, and which

lead from the banks of the Arkansas, near Little Rock, to Saint Louis on

the right, and by the settlement of Mont Prairie, as far as

Natchitoches, on the left. Do the characteristic features of colossal

stature and _white_ color, attributed to nations now destroyed, owe

their origin to the ideas of power and physical force in general, to the

feeling of the intellectual preponderance of the Europeans, or are those

features linked with the fables of white men, legislators, and priests,

which we find among the Mexicans, the inhabitants of New Granada, and so

many other American nations? The skeletons contained in the _tumuli_ of

the trans-Alleganian country belong, for the most part, to a stunted

race of men, of lower stature than the Indians of Canada and the

Missouri.

"An idol discovered at Natchez has been justly compared by M. Malte-Brun

to the images of celestial spirits found by Pallas among the Mongul

nations. If the tribes who inhabit the towns on the banks of the

Mississippi issued from the same country of Aztlan, it must be admitted

that the Tolteques, the Chichimeques, and the Azteques, from the

inspection of their idols, and their essays in sculpture, were much less

advanced in the arts than the Mexican tribes, who, without deviating

toward the east, have followed the great path of the nations of the New

World, directed from north to south, from the banks of the Gila toward

the Lake of Nicaragua."--Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_, vol. vi., p.

328.

No. XLVIII.

"Dr. Morton, in his luminous and philosophical essay on the aboriginal

race of America, seems to have proved that all the different tribes,

except the Eskimaux, are of one race, and that this race is peculiar and

distinct from all others. The physical characteristics of the Fuegians,

the Indians of the tropical plains, those of the Rocky Mountains, and of

the great Valley of the Mississippi, are the same, not only in regard to

feature and external lineaments, but also in osteological structure.

After comparing nearly 400 crania, derived from tribes inhabiting almost

every region of both Americas, Dr. Morton has found the same peculiar

shape pervading all; 'the square or rounded head, the flattened or

vertical occiput, the high cheek bones, the ponderous maxillae, the large

quadrangular orbits, and the low, receding forehead.' The oldest skulls

from the cemeteries of Peru, the tombs of Mexico, or the mounds of the

Mississippi and Ohio, agree with each other, and are of the same type as

the heads of the most savage existing tribes."--Lyell, vol. ii., p. 37.

No. XLIX.

"I saw no person among the Chaymas who had any natural deformity. I

might say the same of thousands of Caribs, Muyseas, and Mexican and

Peruvian Indians, whom we observed during the course of five years.

Bodily deformities--deviations from nature--are infinitely rare among

certain races of men, especially those nations who have the dermoid

system highly colored. I can not believe that they depend solely on the

progress of civilization, a luxurious life, or the corruption of morals.

We might be tempted to think that savages all appear well made and

vigorous, because feeble children die young for want of care, and that

the strongest alone survive; but these causes can not act on the Indians

of the missions, who have the manners of our peasants, and the Mexicans

of Cholula and Tlascala, who enjoy wealth that has been transmitted to

them by ancestors more civilized than themselves. If, in every state of

cultivation, the copper-colored race manifest the same inflexibility,

the same resistance to deviation from a primitive type, are we not

forced to admit that this property belongs in great measure to

hereditary organization--to that which constitutes the race? I use

intentionally the phrase _in great measure_, not entirely to exclude the

influence of civilization. Besides, with copper-colored men, as with the

whites, luxury and effeminacy, by weakening the physical constitution,

had heretofore rendered deformities more common at Corezco and

Tenochtitlan."--Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_, vol. iii., p. 235.

No. L.

To those well read in the sad records of Indian history, the names of

Powhatan, Opechancanough, Massasoit, Alexander, Philip, Canonchet,

Logan, Pontiac, and the never-to-be-forgotten Tecumthe, will suggest

memories fully justifying the above assertion. The name of Tecumthe

signifies "a tiger crouching for his prey." He was equally great in

council and in war, noble and generous in spirit as commanding in

intellect. He bore the commission of Chief of the Indian Forces in the

British army during the late war. He did not, however, join the ranks of

the white men until the failure of several admirably contrived projects

convinced his sound and enlightened judgment that opposition to the

white race was vain. Pontiac was an Ottawa chieftain, who in 1763

succeeded in the next-to-impossible scheme of uniting all the scattered

and often hostile Indian tribes distributed throughout the colonized

districts of North America in one grand confederacy against their

European invaders. Their first step was the projected extinction of all

the white man's posts along a thousand miles of frontier; and he

actually succeeded so far as to cut off, almost simultaneously, nine out

of twelve of these military establishments. The surprise of

Michillimackinac, one of these stations, is thus narrated in a public

document. (It was a period of profound peace between the Europeans and

Indians):

"The fort was then upon the main land, near the northern point of the

peninsula. The Ottawas, to whom the assault was committed, prepared for

a great game of ball, to which the officers of the garrison were

invited. While engaged in play, one of the parties gradually inclined

toward the fort, and the other pressed after them. The ball was once or

twice thrown over the pickets, and the Indians were suffered to enter

and procure it. Nearly all the garrison were present as spectators, and

those on duty were alike unprepared as unsuspicious. Suddenly the ball

was again thrown into the fort, and all the Indians rushed after it. The

rest of the tale is soon told: the troops were butchered, and the fort

destroyed." This extensive and well-laid scheme failed, from Pontiac

himself being betrayed at the fort of Detroit. He has been accused of

great cruelty; but, in contests waged between the red and white races,

this is a word of doubtful import. His generosity and heroism are

undeniable.

As a compliment, Major Rogers had sent Pontiac a bottle of brandy. His

counselors advised him not to take it: "It must be poisoned," said they,

"and sent with a design to kill him;" but Pontiac laughed at their

suspicions. "He can not," he replied, "he can not take my life; I have

saved his!"

No. LI.

But a far truer insight into the religious state of the American Indian

will be obtained by observing how peculiarly and emphatically he is, in

the words of the apostle, "a law unto himself." I mean, how distinctly

he evinces, in the whole moral conduct of his life, that he lives under

a strong and awful sense of positive obligation. It is of little matter

with what doctrines that sense of obligation connects itself. It often

appears to connect itself with none. The Indian can not tell why a

burden is laid upon him to act in this or that manner. He obeys a law

undefined, unwritten, but mysteriously binding upon his spirit. All the

compulsive force which what we call the law of honor had upon the

conscience of a man of the world--I had almost said which religious

sanctions have upon the man of principle--is scarcely to be paralleled

with that kind of moral necessity which seems in some cases to actuate

his proceedings. If religion be what its name implies, _id quod

relligat_, that which binds the will, and enforces self-denial and

self-devotion (be the object or motive held out what it may), then no

people taken in the mass is to be compared, in this respect, to the

savages of America. "After all," says Mr. Flint, "that which has struck

us, in contemplating the Indians, with the most astonishment and

admiration, is the invisible but universal energy of the operation and

influence of an inexplicable law, which has, where it operates, a more

certain and controlling power than all the municipal and written laws of

the whites united. There is despotic rule without any hereditary or

elected chief. There are chiefs with great power, who can not tell when,

where, or how they became such. There is perfect unanimity on a question

involving the existence of a tribe, when every member belonged to the

wild and fierce democracy of nature, and could dissent without giving a

reason. A case occurs where it is prescribed by custom that an

individual should be punished with death. Escaped from the control of

his tribe, and as free as the winds, this invisible tie is about him,

and he returns and surrenders himself to justice. His accounts are not

settled, and he is in debt. He requests delay till he shall have

finished his summer's hunt. He finishes it, pays his debt, and dies with

a constancy which has always been, in all views of the Indian character,

the theme of admiration."--Flint's _Geography of the Mississippi

Valley_, p. 125.

In the expressive words of Penn, "What good might not a good people

graft, where there is so distinct a knowledge both of good and

evil?"--_Report on Aborigines_, 1837, p. 116.

Mr. Merivale adds, "I would not insert the following high-colored

expression in a work edited by Washington Irving, were it not for the

remarkable agreement between all capable observers of the uncontaminated

races of Indians upon this subject. 'Simply to call these people

religious (some tribes of the Rocky Mountains) would convey but a faint

idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of

their conduct. They are more like a nation of saints than a horde of

savages.'"--_Adventures of Captain Bonneville._

No. LII.

Catlin gives the same account of the appropriation of the Manitou or

guardian angel as Lafitau and Charlevoix. He applies to it the term of

Mystery, or Medicine-bag, and thus explains the derivation of the modern

term:

"The term Medicine, in its common acceptation among the Indians, means

mystery, and nothing else. The origin of the term is, that in the French

language a doctor is called '_Medecin_;' the Indian country is full of

doctors, and as they are all magicians, and profess to be skilled in

many mysteries, the word '_medecin_' has become habitually applied to

every thing mysterious or unaccountable, and the English and American

have easily and familiarly adopted the same word, with a slight

alteration conveying the same meaning; and, to be a little more

explicit, they have denominated these personages 'Medicine-men,' which

means something more than merely a doctor or physician. The Indians do

not use the word 'medicine,' however, but in each tribe they have a word

of their own construction synonymous with mystery or mystery-man. Their

medicine-bag then is a mystery-bag, and its meaning and importance

necessary to be understood, as it may be said to be the key to Indian

life and character.

"Feasts are often made, and dogs and horses sacrificed, to a man's

'medicine;' and days, and even weeks of fasting and penance of various

kinds are often suffered to appease his medicine, which he fancies he

has in some way offended. This curious custom has generally been done

away with along the frontier, where white men laugh at the Indian for

the observance of so ridiculous and useless a form; but in this country

(beyond the Rocky Mountains) it is still in full force, and every male

in the tribe carries this his supernatural charm or guardian, to which

he looks for the preservation of his life in battle or in other

danger.... During my travels thus far I have been unable to buy a

medicine-bag of an Indian, though I have offered extravagant prices for

them; and even on the frontier, where they have been induced to abandon

the practice, though a white may induce an Indian to relinquish his

medicine, yet he can not buy it of him: the Indian in such case will

bury it to please a white, and save it from his sacrilegious touch, and

he will linger around the spot, and at regular times visit and pay it

his devotions as long as he lives."--Catlin's _North American Indians_,

vol. i., p. 36.

No. LIII.

Catlin says, "The tribes, so far as I have visited them, all distinctly

believe in the existence of a Great (or Good) Spirit, an Evil (or Bad)

Spirit, and also in a future existence and future accountability,

according to their virtues and vices in this world. So far the North

American Indians would seem to be one family, and such, an unbroken

theory among them; yet, with regard to the manner and form, and time

and place of that accountability--to the constructions of virtues and

vices, and the modes of appeasing and propitiating the Good and Evil

Spirits, they are found in all the change and variety which fortuitous

circumstances, and fictions and fables have wrought upon them.... These

people, living in a climate where they suffer from cold in the severity

of their winters, have very naturally reversed our ideas of heaven and

hell. The latter they describe to be a country very far to the north, of

barren and hideous aspect, and covered with eternal snow and ice. The

torments of this freezing place they describe as most excruciating,

while heaven they suppose to be in a warmer and delightful latitude,

where nothing is felt but the keenest enjoyment, and where the country

abounds in buffaloes and other luxuries of life. The Great or Good

Spirit they believe dwells in the former place, for the purpose of there

meeting those who have offended him, increasing the agony of their

sufferings by being himself present, administering the penalties. The

Bad or Evil Spirit they suppose to be at the same time in Paradise,

still tempting the happy; and those who have gone to the regions of

punishment they believe to be tortured for a time proportioned to the

amount of their transgression, and that they are then to be transferred

to the land of the happy, where they are again liable to the temptation

of the Evil Spirit, and answerable again at a future period for their

new offenses."--Catlin, vol. i., p. 159.

Dr. Richardson says, "While at Carlton I took an opportunity of asking a

communicative old Indian of the Blackfoot nation his opinion of a future

state. He replied that they had heard from their fathers that the souls

of the departed have to scramble with great labor up the sides of a

steep mountain, upon attaining the summit of which they are rewarded

with the prospect of an extensive plain, interspersed here and there

with new tents, pitched in agreeable situations, and abounding in all

sorts of game. While they are absorbed in the contemplation of this

delightful scene, they are descried by the inhabitants of the happy

land, who, clothed in new skins, approach and welcome, with every

demonstration of kindness, those Indians who have led good lives; but

the bad Indians, who have imbrued their hands in the blood of their

countrymen, are told to return from whence they came, and, without more

ceremony, precipitated down the steep sides of the mountain."--Franklin's

_Journey_, p. 77.