almost enjoyed in common; the whole village must be in complete distress before any individual is left in necessity."*

"When they talk in France of the Iroquois," writes La Potherie, who resided in Canada about the end of the seventeenth century," they suppose them to be barbarians always thirsting for human blood. This is a great error. The character which I have to give of that nation is very different from what these prejudices assign to it. The Iroquois are the proudest and most formidable people in North America, and, at the same time, the most politic and sagacious. This is evident from the important affairs which they conduct with the French, the English, and almost all the people of that vast continent."†

The Indian confederacy, generally called the Iroquois, or Five Nations, is supposed to have existed from times of very remote antiquity. It was composed of the Mohawks, Oneydas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas. These were joined, about the beginning of the last century, by the Tuscaroras; but the confederacy still continued to be known by the name of the Five, although sometimes of the Sir Nations. Loskiel, in his History of the Missions among the Indians, notices

• Relation de la Nouvelle France, 1656-57, chap. 12.

+ La Pothérie, Histoire de l'Amérique Septentrionale, vol. iii. Preface.

the political constitution of this singular people, as described by one of the Moravian missionaries about the middle of the last century. He states that it resembled a republic, each of the six nations being independent of the other, or, as they expressed it, having their own fire, round which their chiefs and elders assembled to deliberate on the affairs of their nation. They had also at Onondago a large common fire, to which the great council of the confederacy resorted. None in general

were admitted into the council house but the representatives of the nations. All public business between the Iroquois and any other tribe, was brought before the great fire in Onondaga; at the same time they had agents among other nations to watch over their interests.*

The writers of later times give similar accounts of the Indians among whom they resided. Heckewelder, the celebrated Moravian missionary, who lived upwards of thirty years among them, makes the following observations. My long residence among these nations, in the constant habit of unrestrained familiarity, has enabled me to know them well, and made me intimately acquainted

* Loskiel's History of the Missions among the Indians, &c., part i. chap. 2. An interesting and ample account of the Iroquois Confederacy is to be found in Governor Clinton's Discourse, delivered before the New York Historical Society at their Anniversary Meeting in 1811. New York, 1812.

with the manners, customs, character, and disposition of those men of nature, when uncorrupted by European vices. Of these I think I could draw a highly interesting picture, if I only possessed adequate powers of description; but the talent of writing is not to be acquired in the wilderness among savages. I have felt it, however, to be a duty incumbent upon me to make the attempt, and I have done it in the following pages with a rude but faithful pencil. I have spent great part of my life among those people, and have been treated by them with uniform kindness and hospitality. I have witnessed their virtues, and experienced their goodness. I owe them a debt of gratitude which I cannot acquit better than by presenting to the world this plain unadorned picture, which I have drawn in the spirit of candour and truth.'

Of the numerous writers who have explored the interior of North America, there is none whose description of the Indians is more worthy of perusal than what has been given by Captain Carver. That celebrated traveller did not indeed reside in the Indian country so long as many others who have published accounts of the native tribes, but

* Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations. (Introduction, p. 24.) Published in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, by the Rev. John Heckewelder. (1819.)

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none observed them with a more skilful eye; and besides, he has given us the interesting description of nations who had never before been visited by any European. In describing some of these,-then powerful and populous tribes, he admits that they were cruel, barbarous, and revengeful; persevering and inflexible in their pursuit of an enemy; sanguinary in their treatment of prisoners; and in their wars sparing neither age nor sex. On the other hand, he found them temperate in their mode of living, patient of hunger and fatigue, sociable and humane to those whom they looked upon as friends, and ready to share with them the last morsel of food they possessed, or to expose their lives in their defence. In their public character, he describes them as possessing an attachment to their nation unknown to the inhabitants of any other country, combining, as if actuated by one soul, against their common enemy; never swayed in their councils by selfish or party views, but sacrificing every thing to the honour and advantage of their tribe, in support of which they fear no danger, and are affected by no sufferings.

"In contradiction," says Carver, "to the report of many other travellers, I can assert that, notwithstanding the apparent indifference with which an Indian, after a long absence, meets his wife and children- an indifference proceeding rather from custom than insensibility—he is not unmindful of

ness.

the claims either of connubial or parental tenderThe little story I have introduced in the preceding chapter of the Naudowessie woman lamenting her child, and the immature death of the father, will elucidate this point, and enforce the assertion much better than the most studied arguments I can make use of.”

The following is the story to which he alludes, and in which he adverts to the custom among the Naudowessie (or Scioux) Indians, of maiming and wounding themselves while mourning for their deceased friends and relations.*

"Whilst I remained among them, a couple, whose tent was adjacent to mine, lost a son of about four years of age. The parents were so much affected at the death of their child, that they pursued the usual testimonies of grief with such uncommon rigour, as, through the weight of sorrow, and loss of blood, to occasion the death of the father. The woman, who had been hitherto inconsolable, no sooner saw her husband

Sir

* A similar practice is noticed by Bradbury, as prevailing the Ricaras. among Travels in America, p. 95. Alexander Mackenzie observed the same custom among the Beaver Indians. Voyages in North America, p. 148. Lewis and Clarke notice it also as now existing among the Mandans.—Travels up the Missouri, chap. 4. And a similar account respecting the Kanzas is to be found in James's late Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, chap. 6.