it commonly used by a glazier to carry glass; this is fastened by cords, or strips of tough bark or leather, round their shoulders, and, when the load is fixed upon the broad ledge at the bottom of the frame, two bands are thrown round the whole, one of which is brought across the forehead, and the other across the breast, and thus the load is supported. The length of way an In⚫ dian will travel in the course of the day, when unencumbered with a load, is astonishing. A young Wyandot, who, when peace was about to be made between the Indians and General Wayne, was employed to carry a message from his nation to the American officer, travelled but little short of eighty miles on foot in one day; and I was informed by one of the general's aides-du-camp, who saw him when he arrived at camp, that he did not appear in the least degree farigued.

"Le P. Charlevoix observes, that the Indians seem to him to possess many personal advantages over us; their senses, in particular, he thinks much finer than ours; their sight is, Indeed, quick and penetrating, and it does not fail them till they are far advanced in years, notwithstanding that their eyes are exposed so many months each winter to the dazzling whiteness of the snow, and to the harp irritating smoke of wood fires. Disorders in the eyes are almost wholly unknown to them; nor is the slightest blemish ever seen in their eyes, excepting it be a result from some accident. Their hearing is very acute, and their sense

melling so nice, that they can H when they are approaching a fre long before it is in sight.

The Indians have most reten. ve memories; they will preserve to their deaths a recollection of any 1799

place they have once passed through they never forget a face that they have attentively observed but for a few seconds; at the end of many" years they will repeat every sentence of the speeches that have been de livered by different individuals in a public assembly; and has any speech been made in the council house of the nation, particularly deserving of remembrance, it will be handed down with the utmost accuracy from one generation to another, though perfectly ignorant of the use of hieroglyphics and letters; the only memorials of which they avail themselves are small pieces of woed, such as I told you were brought bys them to Captain E-, preparato ry to the delivery of the presents, and belts of wampuni; the former are only used on trifling occasions, the latter never but on very grand and solemn ones. Whenever à conference, or a talk, as they term it, is about to be held with any neigh bouring tribe, or whenever any treaty of national compact is about to be made, one of these helts, differing in some respect from every other that has been made before, is immediately constructed; each person in the assembly holds this belt in his hand whilst he delivers his speech, and when he has ended, be presents it to the next person that rises; by which ceremony each individual is reminded, that it behoves him to be cautious in his discourse, as all he says will be faithfully recorded by the belt. The talk being over, the belt is deposited in the hands of the principal chief.

On the ratification of a treaty, very broad splendid belts are recipro cally given by the contracting parties, which are deposited amongst the other belts belonging to the nations

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Atstated intervals they are all produced to the nation, and the occasions upon which they were made are mentioned, if they relate to a talk, one of the chiefs repeats the substance of what was said over them; if to a treaty, the terms of it are recapitulated. Certain of the squams, also, ars entrusted with the belts, whose business it is to relate the history of each one of them to the younger branches of the tribe; this they do with great accuracy, and thus it is that the remembrance of every important transaction is kept up.

The wampum is formed of the inside of the clam shell, a large seashell bearing some similitude to that of a scallop, which is found on the coast of New England and Virginia. The shell is sent in its original rough state to England, and there cut into small pieces, exactly similar in shape and size to the modern glass buglès worn by ladies; which little bits of shell constitute wampum. There are two sorts of wampum, the white and the purple; the latter is most esteemed by the Indians, who think a pound weight of it equally valuable with a pound of silver. The wampum is strung upon bits of leather, and the belt is composed of ten, twelve, or more strings, according to the importance of the occasion on which it is made; sometimes also the wampum is sewed, in different patterns, on broad belts of leather."

The use of wampum appears to be very general among the Indian nations; but how it became so, is a question that would require discus-, sion; for it is well known that they are a people obstinately attached to old customs, and that would not therefore be apt to adopt, on the most grand and solemn occasion,

never seen until brought to then by strangers; at the same time it seems wholly impossible that they should ever have been able to have made wanipum from the clam shell for themselves; they fashion the bowls of tobacco pipes, indeed, from stone, in a very curious manner, and with astonishing accuracy, considering that they use no other instrument than a cominon knife, but then the stone which they commonly carve thus is of a very soft kind; the clam shell, however, is exceedingly hard, and to bore and to cut it into such small pieces as are necessary to form wampum, very fine tools would be wanting. Probably they made some use of the clam shell, and endeavoured to reduce it to as small bits as they could with their rude instruments before we came amongst them, but on finding that we could cut it so much more neatly than they could, laid aside the wampum before in ase for that of our manufacture. Mr. Carver tells us, that he found sca shells very generally worn by the Indians who resided in the mot interior parts of the continent, who never could have visited a sea shore themselves, and could only have procured them at the expense of much trouble from other nations.

"The Indians are exceedingly sagacious and observant, and, by dint of minute attention, acquire many qualifications to which we are wholly strangers. They will traverse a trackless forest, hundreds of miles in extent, without deviating from the straight course, and will reach to a certainty the spot whither they intended to go on setting out: with equal skill they will cross one of the large lakes; and though out of sight of the shores for days, will to a cer tainty make the land at once, at the very place they desired.

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posed

posed that the Indians are guided by Instinct, and have pretended that Indian children can find their way through a forest as easily as a person of maturer years; but this is a most absurd notion. It is unquestionably by a close attention to the growth of the trees, and position of the sun, that they find their way. On the northern side of a tree there is generally the most moss, and the bark on that side in general differs from that on the opposite one. The branches towards the south are for the most part more luxuriant than those on the other sides of the trees, and several other distinctions also subsist between the northern and southern sides, conspicuous to Indians, who are taught from their infancy to attend to them, which a common observer would perhaps never notice. Being accustomed from their childhood, likewise, to pay great attention to the position of the sun, they learn to make the most accurate allowance for its apparent motion from one part of the beavens to another, and in any part of the day they will point to the part of the heavens where it is, although the sky be obscured by clouds or

mists.

to pursue their journey, several of the towns-people mounted their horses to escort them part of the way. They proceeded along the high road for some miles, but all at once, hastily turning aside into the woods, though there was no path, the Indians advanced confidently forward; the people who accompanied them, surprised at this movement, informed them that ther were quitting the road to Phila delphia, and expressed their fears less they should miss their comhelon before. panions, who had gone They answered, that they knew better; that the way through the woods was the shortest to Phila

delphia; and that they knew very well that their companions had entered the woods at the very same place they did. Curiosity led some of the horsemen to go on; and to their astonishment, for there was apparently no track, they overtook' the other Indians in the thickest part of the wood; but what ap appeared most singular was, that the route which they took was found, on examining a map, to be as direct for Philadelphia as if they had taken the bearings by a mariner's compass. From

servation when I was at Staunton, situated behind the Blue Mountains, Virginia. A number of the Creek nation had arrived at that town in their way to Philadelphia, whither they were going upon some affairs of importance, and had stopped there for the night, in the morning

ng some circumstance or another, what hat could not be learned, induced one half of the Indians to set off without their companions, who did not follow until some b hours afterwards. When these last were ready beeog

from their village, and had never lost sight of it, although they had already travelled three hundred miles though woods, and had upwards of four hundred miles more to go before they could reach the place of their destination.")

Of the exactness with which they can find out a strange place that they have once been direct ₫ to by their own people, a striking example is furnished us, I think by Mr. Jefferson, in bus account of the Indian, graves in Virginia. These i G2 grave's

graves are nothing more than large mounds of earth in the woods, which, on being opened, are found to contain skeletons in an erect posture: the Indian mode of sepulture has been too often described to remain unknown to j you. But to come to my story. A party of Indians that were passing on to some of the sea ports on the Atlantic, just as the Creeks abovementioned were going to Philadelphia, were observed, all on a sudden, to quit the straight road by which they were proceeding, and, without asking any questions, to strike through the woods in a direct line to one of these graves, which lay at the distance of some miles from the road. Now very near a century must have passed over since the part of Virginia, in which this grave was situated, had been inhabited by Indians; and these Indian travellers, who went to visit it by themselves, had, unquestionably, never been in that part of the country before; they must have found their way to it simply from the description of its situation that had been handed down to them by tradition.

in looking over a pocket map of the state of New York, whe a young Seneka warrior entered. His attention was attracted by the sight of the map, and he seemed at once to comprehend the meaning of it; but never having before seen a general map of the state of New York, an and being wholly ignorant of the use of letters, he could not discover to what part of the country it had a reference; simply, however, by laying my finger upon the spot where we then were, and by show ing to him the line that denoted, Buffalo Creek, on which his village was situated, I gave him the clue to the whole; and having done so, he quickly ran over the map, and with the utmost accuracy pointed out, by name, every lake and river for upwards of two hundred miles distant. from his village. All the lakes and rivers in this part of the country still retain the Indian names, so that had he named them wrong I could have at once detected him. His pleasure was so great on beholding such a perfect map of the country, that he could not refrain from calling some of his companions, who were loitering at the door, to come and look at it. They made signs to me to lend it to them; I did so, and having laid it on a table, they sat over it for more than half an hour, during which time I observed they frequently testified their pleasure to one another on finding particular places accurately lain down which they had been acquainted with. The older men also seemed to have many stories to tell the others, probably respecting the adventures they had met with at distant parts of the coun try, and which they were now glad. of having an opportunity of eluci dating by the map before them.

Whenever a tract of ground is about to be purchased by goveta

ment

ment from the Indians, for no private individuals can purchase lands from them by the laws of the pro-, vince, a map of the country is drawn, and the part about to be contracted for is particularly marked out. If there be any mistakes in these maps, the Indians will at once point them out; and after the bargain is made, they will, from the maps, mark out the boundaries of the lands they have ceded with the greatest accuracy, notching the trees, if there be any, along the boundary line, and if not, placing stakes or stones in the ground to denote where, it runs. On these occasions regular deeds of sale are drawn, with accurate maps of the lands which have been purchased attached to them, and these deeds are signed in form by the contracting parties., I, saw several of them in possession of our friend Captain E, which Ewere extremely curious on account of the Indian signatures. The Indians, for the most part, take upon them the name of some animal, as, the blue snake, the little turkey, the big bear, the mad dog, &c and their signatures consist of the outline, drawn with a pen, of the different animals whose names they bear. Some of the signatures at the bottom of these deeds were really well executed, and were lively representations of the animals they were intended for.

"The Indians in general possess no small share of ingenuity. Their domestic wooden utensils, bows and arrows, and other weapons, &c, are made with the utmost neatness; and indeed the workmanship of them is frequently such as to excite astonishment, when it is considered that a knife and a hatchet are the only in-, struments they make use of. On the handles of their tomahawks, on their powder horns, on the bowls

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of their pipes, &c, you oftentimes meet with figures extremely well designed, and with specimens of care ving far from contemptible. The embroidery upon their moccasins and other garments shows that the females are not less ingenious in, their way than the men. Their porcupine quill-work would com mand admiration in any country. in Europe. The soft young quills. of the porcupine are those which they use, and they dye them of the most beautiful and brilliant colours imaginable, Some of their dyes have been discovered, but many, of them yet remain unknown as do also many of the medicines with which they perform sometimes most miraculous cures. Their dyes and medicines are all procured from the... vegetable world.

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But though the Indians prove by their performances, that they have some relish for the works of art, yet they are by no means ready, to bestow commendations on every thing curious for its workmanship that is shown to them. Trinkets or ornaments for dress, though ever so gaudy or ever so neatly manufactured, they despise, unless somewhat similar in their kind to what they themselves are accustomed to wear, and fashioned exactly to their own taste, which has remained nearly the same since Europeans first came amongst them; nor will they praise any curious or wonderful piece of mechanism, unless they can see that it is intended to answer some us ful purpose. Nothing that I could show them attracted their attention, I observed, so much as a light double-barrelled gun, which 1 commonly carried in my hand when walking about their encamper ments. This was something in their own way; they at once perceived a the benefit that must accrue to the sportsman

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