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mane; their hospitality is so great that they extend it to every one who is not their enemy. They speak with much judgment and reason, and, when they have any important enterprise to undertake, the chief is attentively listened to for two or three hours together, and he is answered point to point, as the subject may require."

In 1656 the Jesuit missionaries among the Iroquois reported: "Among many faults caused by their blindness and barbarous education, we meet with virtues enough to cause shame among the most of Christians. Hospitals for the poor would be useless among them, because there are no beggars; those who have are so liberal to those who are in want, that everything is enjoyed in common. The whole village must be in distress before any individual is left in necessity."

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Captain Carver, who travelled in 1766 among the wildest tribes, describes them as "cruel, barbarous, and revengeful in war, persevering and inflexible in pursuit of an enemy, sanguinary in their treatment of prisoners, and 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 all whom they looked on 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 a common enemy, never swayed in their councils by selfish or party views, but sacrificing everything to the honor and advantage of their tribe, in support of which they fear no danger, and are affected by no sufferings. They are not only affectionately attached, indeed, to their own offspring, but are extremely fond of children in general. They instruct them carefully in their own principles, and train them up with attention in the maxims and habits of their nation. Their system consists chiefly in the influence of example, and impressing on them the traditionary histories of their ancestors. When the children act wrong, their parents remonstrate and reprimand but never chastise them."HALKETT'S Hist. Notes.

The very idea of corporal punishment of little children seems to have been peculiarly obnoxious to the native North American. In the "Relation de Nouvelle France," published in 1633, there is a curious story of an incident which took place at Quebec. A party of Indians, watching a French drummer-boy beat his drum,

pressed more closely around him than he liked, and he struck one of the Indians in the face with his drum-stick so sharply that the blow drew blood. The Indians, much offended, went to the interpreter and demanded apologies and a present, according to their custom. "No," said the interpreter, 66 our custom is to

punish the offender; we will punish the boy in your presence.' When the Indians saw the child stripped for the flogging they began immediately to beg for his pardon; but as the soldiers continued their preparations for whipping the lad, one of the Indians suddenly stripped himself and threw his robe over the boy, crying out, "Scourge me, if you choose, but do not strike the boy! The good Father Le Jeune, who tells this story, adds that this unwillingness of the Indians to see any child chastised "will probably occasion trouble to us in the design we have to instruct their youth."

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As far back as 1587 we find evidence that the Indians were not without religion. Thomas Hariot, an employé of Sir Walter Raleigh's, writing from the Virginia colony, says of the Virginia Indians: " Theye beleeve that there are many gods, which theye call Mantaoc, but of different sorts and degrees; one onely chief and Great God, which hath been from all eternitie; who, as theye affirme, when hee proposed to make the world, made first other gods of a principall order, to bee as means and instruments to bee used in the creation and government to folow; and after the sunne, moone, and starres as pettie gods, and the instruments of the other order more principall."

"In general," says Hunter, "a day seldom passes with an elderly Indian, or others who are esteemed wise and good, in which a blessing is not asked, or thanks returned to the Giver of Life, sometimes audibly, but more generally in the devotional language of the heart."

All the employés of the North-west Fur Company bear the same testimony to the fidelity and honesty of the Indians.

General H. Sibley once said to Bishop Whipple that for thirty years it had been the uniform boast of the Sioux in every council that they had never taken the life of a white man.

IV.

OUTRAGES COMMITTED ON INDIANS BY WHITES.

IN Captain Bonneville's narrative of five years spent in the Rocky Mountains are many instances of cruel outrages committed by whites upon Indians.

"One morning one of his trappers, discovering that his traps had been carried off in the night, took a horrid oath that he would kill the first Indian he should meet, innocent or guilty. As he was returning with his comrades to camp, he beheld two unfortunate Root Diggers seated on the bank, fishing; advancing upon them, he levelled his rifle, shot one on the spot, and flung his bleeding body into the stream.

"A short time afterward, when this party of trappers were about to cross Ogden's River, a great number of Shoshokies, or Root Diggers, were posted on the opposite bank, when they imagined they were there with hostile intent; they advanced upon them, levelled their rifles, and killed twenty-five of them on the spot. The rest fled to a short distance, then halted and turned about, howling and whining like wolves, and uttering most piteous wailings. The trappers chased them in every direction. The poor wretches made no defence, but fled in terror; nor does it appear from the accounts of the boasted victors that a weapon had been wielded by the Indians throughout the affair.”

There seemed to be an emulation among these trappers which could inflict the greatest outrages on the natives. They chased them at full speed, lassoed them like cattle, and dragged them till they were dead.

At one time, when some horses had been stolen by the Riccarees, this same party of trappers took two Riccaree Indians prisoners, and declared that, unless the tribe restored every horse that had been stolen, these two Indians, who had strayed into the trappers' camp without any knowledge of the offence committed, should be burnt to death.

"To give force to their threat, a pyre of logs and fagots was heaped up and kindled into a blaze. The Riccarees released one horse and then another; but, finding that nothing but the relinquishment of all their spoils would purchase the lives of the tives, they abandoned them to their fate, moving off with many parting words and howlings, when the prisoners were dragged to

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the blazing pyre and burnt to death in sight of their retreating comrades.

"Such are the acts that lead to terrible recriminations on the part of the Indians. Individual cases of the kind dwell in the recollections of whole tribes, and it is a point of honor and conscience to avenge them.

"The records of the wars between the early settlers of Virginia and New England and the natives exhibit cruelties on both sides that make one shudder. *** When the Indian would tear the scalp from the crown of the scarcely yet dead victim, and mutilate the body, could he be expected to reform those cruelties when he saw the white man in his turn cut off the heads of his people, and mutilate and quarter their bodies, as was done with King Philip's, whose head, after being cut off, was sent to Plymouth and hung up there on a gibbet, where it remained twenty years, while one of his hands was sent to Boston as a trophy, his body being quartered and hung upon four trees?"-M'FORLEY'S History and Travels.

FROM REPORT OF THE INDIAN BUREAU FOR 1854.

"Port Orford, Oregon Territory, February 5th, 1854. "I grieve to report to you that a most horrid massacre, or rather an out-and-out barbarous murder, was perpetrated on a portion of the Nason tribe, residing at the mouth of the Coquille River, on the morning of the 28th of January last, by a party of forty miners. Before giving you the result of my examination and my own conclusions, I will give you the reasons which that party assign in justification of their acts.

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They avow that, for some time past, the Indians at the mouth of the Coquille have been insolent; that they have been in the habit of riding the horses of white men without permission; that of late they have committed many thefts, such as stealing paddles and many other articles the property of white men; that one of their number recently discharged his gun at the ferry-house; and that but a few days prior to the attack on the Indians, the chief, on leaving the ferry-house, where he had just been fed, fired his gun at a party of four white men standing near the door of the house. They further state that, on the 27th of January, they sent for the chief to come in for a talk; that he not only refused to come in, but sent back word that he would kill white men if they came to his home; that he meant to kill all the white men he could; that he was determined to drive the white men out of his

country; that he would kill the men at the ferry, and burn their houses. Immediately after this conversation with the chief, the white men at and near the ferry-house assembled, and deliberated on the necessity of an immediate attack on the Indians.

"The result of their deliberation, with the full proceedings of their meeting, is herein enclosed. At the conclusion, a courier was despatched to the upper mines for assistance. A party of about twenty responded to the call, and arrived at the ferry-house on the evening preceding the morning of the massacre. On the arrival of this re-enforcement the proceedings of the meeting first held were reconsidered, and unanimously approved.

"At the dawn of day on the morning of the 28th of January the party of the ferry, joined by about twenty men from the upper mines, organized, and, in three detachments, marched upon the Indian ranches, and consummated a most inhuman slaughter. A full account of what they term ' a fight' you will find in the report which their captain, George H. Abbott, forwarded to me on the day of the massacre.

"The Indians were roused from sleep to meet their death, with but feeble show of resistance. They were shot down as they were attempting to escape from their houses; fifteen men and one squaw killed; two squaws badly wounded. On the part of the white men, not even the slightest wound was received. The houses of the Indians, with but one exception, were fired, and entirely destroyed. Thus was committed a massacre too inhuman to be readily believed. Now for my examination of this horrid affair.

"On the morning of the 29th of January I left Port Orford for the Coquille. We arrived at the ferry-house early in the evening of that day. Early in the morning of the day after my arrival I sent for the chief, who immediately came in, attended by about thirty of his people. The chief, as well as his people, was so greatly alarmed-apparently apprehensive that the white men would kill them even in my presence-that it was with a good deal of difficulty that I could induce him to express his mind freely. He seemed only anxious to stipulate for peace and the future safety of his people; and to procure this he was willing to accept any terms that I might dictate. The chief was evidently afraid to complain of or censure the slaughterers of his tribe, and for a time replied to all the charges made against him with hesitancy. After repeated assurances of protection, he finally answered to the point every interrogatory. I asked him if he had at any

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