Proud, in his history of Pennsylvania, says that “Penn, being now returned from Maryland to Coaquannuck, purchased land from the Indians, whom he treated with great justice and sincere kindness. It was at this time, when he first entered into that personal friendship with them, which ever afterward continued between them, and which, for the space of more that seventy years, was never interrupted, or so long as the Quakers retained power in Pennsylvania. His conduct in general to the people, was in engaging his justice in particular so conspicuous, and the counsel and advice he gave them were so evidently for their advantage, that he became thereby very much endeared to them, and the sense thereof made such deep impressions on their minds, that his name and memory will scarcely be effaced while they continue a people."

The great Elm Tree, under which the Penn treaty was confirmed, became historic. During our revolutionary war, when the British forces under General Simcoe were quartered at Kensington, and his troops were cutting down the trees in the neighborhood for firewood, he guarded it with sentinels, with orders not to permit a branch to be cut from it. This tree, in 1811, yielded to a storm and was blown down, when the wood was used for cups and various other articles, to be preserved as memorials.

The habits, manners, and customs of the Indians, in their wild state, at the time Penn came among them, he has transmitted to us, and they are but little different from such as attach to the uncivilized Indians of a later date. He

says: "The natives I shall consider in their persons, manners, language, religion, and government, with my sense of the original. For their persons, they are generally tall, straight, well built, and of singular proportions. They tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin; of complexion dark, but by design, as the gypsies in England. They grease themselves with bear's oil clarified; and using no defense against sun or weather, their skins must needs be swarthy. Their eye is little and black, not unlike a straight Jew; the thick lip and flat nose, so frequent with the East Indian and the blacks are not common to them, for I have seen as comely,

European-like faces among them, of both sexes, as on the other side of the sea; and truly an Italian-like complexion hath not much more of the white, and the nose of many of them hath much of the Roman.

"Their language is lofty, yet narrow; but like the Hebrew, in signification-full, like shorthand in writing, one word serveth in the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the understanding of the hearer; imperfect in their tenses, wanting in their moods, participles, adverbs, conjunctions. I have made it my business to understand the language, that I might not want an interpreter on any business, and I must say that I know not a language spoken in Europe, that hath words of more sweetness or greatness, in accent and emphasis, than theirs; for instances, Oc-to-co-chau, Kan-co-cas, Oric-tou, Schack, Po-ques-com, all which are names of places, and have grandeur in them. Of words of sweetness, Anna, is mother; Inemas, is brother; Nitcap, is friend; Ur-gue-vut, is very good; Pa-nee, is bread; Met-sa, eat; Mettah-nehattah, to have; Paya-ta-camis, Sas-pas-sin, Pas-se-gan, the names of places. Tar-ma-nee, Se-ca-nee, Ma-nau-see, Sa-catorious, are the names of persons.

"If one ask them for any thing they have not, they will answer, Mettah-ne-Hattah, which to translate, means is not I have, instead of I have not.

"Of their manners and customs there is much to be said. I will begin with children. So soon as they are born they wash them in water, and while very young, and in cold water to choose, they plunge them in the river, to harden and embolden them. Having wrapped them in a cloth, they lay them on a straight thin board, a little more than the length and breadth of the child, and swaddle it first upon the board, to make it straight-wherefore all Indians have flat headsand thus they carry them at their backs. The children go very young, at nine months old, commonly; they use only a small cloth round their waist till they are large; if boys, they go a fishing till ripe for the woods, which is about fifteen; then they hunt, and after giving some proofs of their manhood, by a good return of skins, they may marry, else it is a shame to think of a wife. The girls stay with their mothers,

and help to hoe the ground, plant corn, and carry burdens; and they do well to use them young, which they must do when they are old, for the wives are the true servants of the husbands, otherwise the men are very affectionate to them.

"When the young women are fit for marriage, they wear something on their heads for an advertisement, but so as their faces are hardly seen but when they please. The age they marry at, if women, is about thirteen or fourteen; if boys, seventeen or eighteen; they are seldom older.

"Their houses are mats or barks of trees, set on poles, in the fashion of English barns, out of the power of the winds, for they are hardly higher than a man; they lie on reeds or grass; in traveling they lie in the woods, about a great fire, with the mantle of duffles they wear by day wrapped about them, and a few boughs stuck around them.

"Their diet is maize or Indian corn, divers ways prepared; sometimes roasted in the ear in ashes, sometimes beaten and boiled with water, which they call hominy; they also make cakes, not unpleasant to eat; they have likewise several sorts of beans and peas that are good nourishment, and the woods and rivers are their larder.

"If a European comes to see them, or calls for lodging at their house or wigwam, they give him the best place, and the first cut. If they come to visit us, they salute us with an Itah,' which is as much as to say, good be to you, and set them down, which is generally on the ground; it may be they speak not a word, but observe all that is passing. If you give them any thing to eat or drink, well, for they will not ask; and be it little or much, if it be with kindness, they are well pleased, else they go away sullen, but say nothing.

"They are great concealers of their own resentment, brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that hath been practiced among them; in either of these they are not exceeded by the Italians.

"But in liberality they excel; nothing is too good to set for a friend; give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, it may pass twenty hands before it sticks; light of heart, strong affections, but soon spent. The most merry creatures that live; they feast and dance perpetually, almost; they never have much, nor want much; wealth circulateth like the blood;

all parties partake, and none shall want what another party hath, yet exact observers of property. Some kings sold, others presented me with several tracts of land; the pay or presents I presented them were not hoarded by the particular owners, but the neighboring kings and their class being present when the goods were brought out, the parties chiefly consulted what and to whom they should give them. To every king, then, by the hands of a person for that work appointed, is a portion sent, so sorted and folded, and with that gravity which is admirable. Then the kings subdivide it in like manner among their subjects, they hardly leaving themselves an equal share with one of their subjects, and be it on such occasions as festivals, or at their common meals, the kings distribute, and to themselves last. They care for little, because they want but little, and the reason is, a little contents them; in this, they sufficiently revenge on us; if they are ignorant of our pleasures, they are free from our pains.

"They are not disquieted with bills of lading and exchange, nor perplexed with chancery suits and exchequer reckonings. We sweat and toil to live; their pleasure feeds them. I mean their hunting, fishing, and fowling, and this table is spread anywhere; they eat twice a day, morning and evening; their table and seats are the ground. Since Europeans came into these parts, they are grown great lovers of strong drink, rum especially, and for it exchange the richest of their skins and furs. If they are heated with liquor, they are restless till they have enough to sleep; that is their cry, some more, and I will go to sleep; but when drunk, one of the most wretched spectacles in the world.

"In sickness, impatient to be cured, and for it give any thing, especially for their children, to whom they are extremely natural. They drink at those times a teran, or concoction of roots in spring water, and if they eat any flesh, it must be the female of any creature. If they die, they bury them with their apparel, be they men or women, and the nearest of kin fling in something precious with them, as a token of their love; their mourning is blacking of their faces, which they continue for a year; they are choice of the graves of their dead, least they should be lost by time, and fall to

common use; they pick off the grass that grows upon them, and heap up the fallen earth with great care and exactness.

"These poor people are under a dark night in things relating to religion; to be sure, the traditions of it they have only; yet they believe in a God and immortality, without the help of metaphysics; for, say they, there is a great King that made them, and that the souls of the good shall go thither, where they shall live again. Their worship consists of two parts-sacrifice and cantico; their sacrifice is their first fruits; the first and the fattest buck they kill goeth to the fire, where he is burnt, with the mournful ditty of him that performeth the ceremony, but with such marvelous fervency and labor of body, that they will even sweat to a foam. The other part is their cantico, performed by round dances, sometimes words, sometimes songs, then shouts; two being in the middle, that begin, and by singing and drumming on a board, direct the chorus. Their postures in the dance are very antique and differing, but all keep measure. This is done with equal earnestness and labor, but great appearances of joy. In the fall, when the corn cometh in, they begin to feast one another. There have been two great festivals already, to which all comethat would; I was at one myself. Their entertainment was a great seat by a spring, under some shady trees, and twentyfive bucks, with hot cakes of new corn, both wheat and beans, which they make up in square form, in the leaves of the stem, and bake them in the ashes; and after that they fall to dancing. But they that go must carry a small present, in their money; it may be sixpence, which is made of the bone of a fish; the black is with them as gold, the white silver; they call it all wampum.

"Their government is by kings, which they call sachema, and those reign by succession, but always of the mother's side; for instance, the children of him who is now king will not succeed, but his brother, by the mother, or the children of his sister, whose sons (and after them the children of her daughter,) will reign, for no woman inherits. The reason they render for this way of descent is that their issue may not be spurious.

"Every king hath his council, and that consists of all the