Time

had been married but a short time, and who had borne him a son. added confirmation to this plan. It was talked of, and even debated by the chiefs. It was conceded to be due to his bravery. All, indeed, appeared to approve of it, but his wife. She heard of the rumor with alarm, and received the account of its confirmation, with pain. It could no longer be doubted, for the individual who was to share, nay, control the lodge with her was named, and the consent of her parents had been obtained.

Monon, or the Little-Iron-Wood-Tree, as she was called, was a female of no ordinary firmness of character. She was ardently attached to her husband, not the less so for his rising fame, jealous of her rights, and prompted by strong feelings to maintain them. In all these points she was above the generality of her country women. Like others, however, in a community where poligamy was common, she might have submitted at length, to her fate, had not her rival in the affections of Takozid, appealed to a deeper seated principle, and waked up, in the breast of the injured wife, the feeling of revenge: a principle reckless enough, in communities where there are the safeguards of education and christianity to restrain and regulate it; but horrible in wild and roving bands of barbarians. Monon's fidelity was slandered. She was a pure and high minded woman, and the imputation goaded her to the quick.

When this slander first reached her ears, through the ordinary channel of village gossip, a chord was struck, which vibrated through every throe, and steeled her heart for some extraordinary act; although none could anticipate the sanguinary deed which marked the nuptial night. An Indian marriage is often a matter of little ceremony. It was not so, on this occasion. To render the events imposing, many had been invited. The bride was dressed in her best apparel. Her father was present. Many young and old, males and females were either present or thronged around the lodge. The broad clear blue waters of the lake, studded with green islands, spread before the door. A wide grassy lawn, which was the village ball and play ground, extended down to its margin. It was a public event. A throng had gathered around. Takozid was to be married. He was to take a second wife, in the daughter of Obegwud. Takozid himself was there. Hilarity reigned within and without. All indeed, were there, but the dejected and deserted Monon, who had been left with her child, at the chieftain's own lodge.

But a spirit had been aroused in her breast, which would not permit her to remain absent. She crossed the green silently, stealthily. She stood gazing awhile at the lake. She approached the bridal lodge. She passed easily among the group. She entered the lodge. Nor had any

one, at that moment, a thought of suspicion or alarm. The bride was seated on her envied abbinos; her affianced husband was at her side. All at once, there arose a shrill cry, in the Chippewa tongue. vociferated the enraged Monon, This for the bastard!" and at each repeti

"This,

tion of the words, she raised an Indian poignard, in her hand. The suddenness of her movement had paralyzed every attempt to arrest her. Amazement sat in every face. She had plunged a pointed knife into the breast of her rival.

suddenness

There is little to be added to such a catastrophe. Its very and atrocity appalled every one. Nobody arrested her, and nobody pursued her. She returned as she came, and re-entered her lodge. Her victim never spoke.

From this moment the fame of Takozid declined. The event appeared to have unmanned him. He went no more to war.

His martial spirits appeared to have left him. He sank back into the mass of Indian society, and was scarcely ever mentioned. Nor should we, indeed, have recalled his name from its obscurity, were it not associated in the Indian reminiscences of Leach lake, with this sanguinary deed.

I had this relation a few years ago, from a trader, who had lived at Leech lake, who personally knew the parties, and whose veracity I had no reason at all, to call into question. It is one of the elements that go into the sum of my personal observations, on savage life, and as such I cast it among these papers. To judge of the Red race aright, we must view it, in all its phases, and if we would perform our duty towards them, as christians and men, we should gather our data from small, as well as great events, and from afar as well as near. When all has been done, in the way of such collections and researches, it will be found, we think, that their errors and crimes, whatever they are, assume no deeper dye than philanthropy has had reason to apprehend them to take, without a knowledge of the principles of the gospel. Thou shalt not kill, is a law, yet to be enforced, among more than two hundred thousand souls, who bear the impress of a red skin, within the acknowledged limits of the American Union.

IMPROMPTU.

On passing the Inn of "A Failing" on the Mohawk, in 1810.

Sure fortune's a bubble, and life is a joke,

Or fate would this man be assailing;

For

pray where's the mortal who would not have broke,

If he'd forty long years been a-failing.

Men who sincerely desire peace, says Xenophon, ought not to expect from others a thorough compliance with their own demands, whilst they manifest a disposition to engross all power to themselves.

THE MANITO TREE.

There is a prominent hill in the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie, at the outlet of lake Superior, called by the French La Butte des Terres. An Indian footpath formerly connected this hill with the old French settlement at those falls, from which it is distant about a mile. In the intermediate space, near the path, there formerly stood a tree, a large mountain ash, from which, Indian tradition says, there issued a sound, resembling that produced by their own war-drums, during one of the most calm and cloudless days. This occurred long before the French appeared in the country. It was consequently regarded as the local residence of a spirit,

and deemed sacred.

From that time they began to deposit at its foot, an offering of small green twigs and boughs, whenever they passed the path, so that, in process of time, a high pile of these offerings of the forest was accumulated. It seemed as if, by this procedure, the other trees had each made an offering to this tree. At length the tree blew down, during a violent storm, and has since entirely decayed, but the spot was recollected and the offerings kept up, and they would have been continued to the present hour, had not an accidental circumstance put a stop to it.

In the month of July 1822, the government sent a military force to take post, at that ancient point of French settlement, at the foot of the falls, and one of the first acts of the commanding officer was to order out a fatigue party to cut a wagon road from the selected site of the post to the hill. This road was directed to be cut sixty feet wide, and it passed over the site of the tree. The pile of offerings was thus removed, without the men's knowing that it ever had had a superstitious origin; and thus the practice itself came to an end. I had landed with the troops, and been at the place but nine days, in the exercise of my appropriate duties as an Agent on the part of the government to the tribe, when this trait of character was mentioned to me, and I was thus made personally acquainted with the locality, the cutting of the road, and the final extinction of the rite.

Our Indians are rather prone to regard the coming of the white man, as fulfilling certain obscure prophecies of their own priests; and that they are, at best, harbingers of evil to them; and with their usual belief in fatality, they tacitly drop such rites as the foregoing. They can excuse themselves to their consciences in such cases, in relinquishing the worship of a local manito, by saying: it is the tread of the white man that has desecrated the ground.

Many who praise virtue, says the author of the Rambler, do no more than praise it.

192

NIAGARA, AN ALLEGORY.

An old grey man on a mountain lived,
He had daughters four and one,

And a tall bright lodge of the betula bark
That glittered in the sun.

He lived on the very highest top,

For he was a hunter free,

Where he could spy on the clearest day,
Gleams of the distant sea.

Come out-come out! cried the youngest one,
Let us off to look at the sea,

And out they ran in their gayest robes,

And skipped and ran with glee.

Come Su,* come Mi,† come Hu,‡ come Sa,§
Cried laughing little Er,||

Let us go to yonder broad blue deep,

Where the breakers foam and roar.

And on they scampered by valley and wood,

By earth and air and sky,

Till they came to a steep where the bare rocks stood,

In a precipice mountain high.

Inya! cried Er, here's a dreadful leap,

But we are gone so far,

That if we flinch and return in fear,

Nos,** he will cry ha! ha!

Now each was clad in a vesture light,

That floated far behind,

With sandals of frozen water drops,
And wings of painted wind.

And down they plunged with a merry skip,
Like birds that skim the plain;

And hey! they cried, let us up and try

And down the steep again.

And up and down the daughters skipped,

Like girls on a holiday,

And laughed outright, at the sport and foam,
They called Niagara.

If ye would see a sight so rare,

Where nature's in her glee,

Go, view the spot in the wide wild west,

The land of the brave and free.

OR

THE RED RACE OF AMERICA.

PART FOURTH.

PERSONAL INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS OF THE RED RACE, DRAWN FROM NOTES OF RESIDENCE AND TRAVEL IN THE INDIAN TERRITORIES.

DOMESTIC CONDITION OF THE TRIBES AND CONSTUTION OF THE
INDIAN FAMILY.

INQUIRY II.—What is the domestic condition and organization of the Indian family? Is the tie of consanguinity strong, and what characteristic facts can be stated of it? How are the domestic duties arranged? What are the rights of each inmate of the lodge? How is order maintained in so confined a space, and the general relations of the family preserved? Are the relative duties and labours of the hunter and his wife, equally or unequally divided? Who builds the lodge, and how is it constructed?

THERE is a very striking agreement, in the condition, relative duties and obligations, of the Indian family, among all the tribes of whom I have any personal knowledge, in North America. Climate and position, the abundance or want of the means of subsistence and other accidental causes, have created gradations of condition in the various tribes, some of whom excel others in expertness, in hunting and war, and other arts, but these circumstances have done little to alter the general characteristics, or to abridge or enlarge the original rights and claims of each inmate of the lodge. The tribes who cultivated maize in the rich sub-vallies and plains of the Ohio and Mississippi, had fuller means of both physical and mental development, than those who were, and still are, obliged to pick a scanty subsistence, among the frigid, and half marine regions in the latitudes north of the great lakes. There are some peculiar traits of manners, in the prairie-tribes, west of the Mississippi, who pursue the bison on horse back, and rely for their subsistence greatly, on its flesh, and the sale of its

The well fed Muscogee, Cherokee, or Choctaw, who lived in the sunny vallies of upper Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, the robust Osage, revelling in the abundance of corn and wild meat, south of the