hastening, in order that their friends may not enter upon it defenceless and unprovided, they bury with their bodies bows and arrows, and other weapons used in hunting and war. They deposite, also, in their tombs, the skins or stuffs of which they make their garments, Indian-corn, venison, domestic utensils, and whatever is considered necessary in their simple mode of life.

In some provinces, when a chief, or cacique, dies, his wives and slaves are put to death, in order that he may appear in another world with the same dignity as here, and be waited upon by the same attendants.

All nations, from the most refined to the most barbarous, it is believed, have their prophets, their soothsayers, their augurs, and their magicians. Even Cicero sought and obtained at Rome the office of augur.

Astonished with occurrences of which it is unable to comprehend the cause alarmed at events of which it cannot discover the issue or the consequences, the human mind has recourse to other means of discovering them than the exercise of its own sagacity. Hence, superstition becomes a regular system, and divination a religious act. Priests, as the ministers of Heaven, pretend to deliver its oracles. Among savage nations they are the soothsayers, augurs, and magicians, who possess the sacred art of disclosing to man what is concealed from other eyes.

Among such uncultivated nations, a curiosity to discover what is future and unknown, is cherished also by a different principle, and derives strength from another alliance. Diseases, among savages, are few and violent. Impatience under what they suffer, and their solicitude for the recovery of health, inspires them with extraordinary reverence for such as pretend to understand the nature of maladies. These ignorant pretenders, in most cases, are strangers to the human frame, and unacquainted with the cause or cure of disease; they resort, therefore, to superstition for aid, which, mingled with some portion of craft, supplies what is wanting in science. The credulity, and love of the marvellous, natural to uninformed men, favors the deception, and hence the success of impostors. Among savages, their first physicians are a kind of augur, or wizard, who boasts of his knowledge, and pretends to discern the future. Superstition in its earliest form, we have observed, originated from a desire to be delivered from present distress, and not from the evils which await us in a future world; it would, therefore, seem that superstition originally was grafted on medicine, and not on religion. The conjuror, the sorcerer, or the prophet-which means the same thing-thus becomes an important personage. Long before man had acquired a knowledge of Deity that inspired him with reverence, we observe him stretching out a presumptuous hand, to draw aside the veil with which Providence kindly conceals its purposes from our view.

To discern and to worship a superintending power, is an evidence of the maturity of man's understanding; a vain, foolish, inconsiderate desire to pry into futurity, is the error of its infancy, and a proof of its weakness. From this weakness proceeds the faith of savages in dreams and

omens; and the same remark will apply with equal force to man pretending to be civilized.

"Eloquence in council, and bravery in war," for more than two centuries have been attributed to the savage, and the inquiry has scarcely been made, "whether these things are so."

Of the latter we have spoken already, and said as much, perhaps, as the occasion requires. Montesquieu very justly remarks, that fear is the first law of our nature. Courage and bravery cannot, then, be instinctive; but, like other human acquisitions, depend for their existence upon circumstances. The savage warrior may or may not be brave; that he is so, at times, all admit; that he is also, at other times, a great coward, is equally true; and, upon the whole, that he is less brave or courageous than the regular soldier, bred to arms in the ranks of civilized life, is too apparent to require an argument.

In relation to Indian eloquence, a diversity of opinion must and will, for a long time, exist among those whose opportunities enable them to decide correctly, and whose judgment is not perverted by the force of that current, which has so long and so uniformly flowed in a particular channel. Travellers, in the early settlement of this country, with a view to magnify their own exploits, indulged themselves in great latitude of expression, when speaking of the eloquence and bravery of savage warriors. Their reports were published and republished, until a channel was formed in the public mind, and the Indian was thus exalted "above all Grecian, above all Roman fame."

Mr. Jefferson assisted, many years ago, in giving currency to this opinion, by publishing a speech said to have been written by the celebrated Logan, a chief of the six nations, to Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia. Had such a speech been delivered as is written down for him by his friends in civilized life, it would have tended, in a great measure, to confirm the opinion so often expressed, in relation to Indian eloquence. Considering it, however, as the handy work of others, and in part of Mr. Jefferson, whose pen, like the touch of Midas, converted everything, not into gold, but into eloquence; or, as one of those celebrated speeches put into the mouth of some distinguished warrior of antiquity, by Livy or Tacitus, it loses half its charms.

The speech above alluded to, unlike any Indian speech ever in fact delivered, we insert:

"I appeal to any white man to say, if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him no meat-if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not? During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the

veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge: I have sought it-I have killed many-I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear-Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

The same ideas were put into verse by Campbell, in his Gertrude of Wyoming, and may, perhaps, with the same propriety, be imputed to Logan :

'He left of all my tribe

Nor man, nor child, nor thing of living birth;

No, not the dog that watched my household hearth
Escaped that night of blood, upon our plains.

All perished. I alone am left on earth;

To whom nor relative nor blood remains-
No, not a kindred drop that runs in human veins."

Erskine, the celebrated, English barrister, afterward chancellor, has also contributed much to foster this delusion. Upon the trial of Stockdale, in the court of king's bench, for a libel growing out of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, when speaking of the British conduct in India, and of their efforts to support an authority "which Heaven never gave,' remarks: "I have not been considering this subject through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself, among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them, in my youth, from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure-who is it that caused this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being that gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave curs to us; and by this title we will defend them!' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated men all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control when it is in vain to look for affection."

We have quoted the whole passage, because it purports not only to contain a speech, but exhibits also the action of a savage warrior on the occasion alluded to. It will be recollected, however, that the above are mere fancy pieces, emanating from the fertile imagination of Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Erskine, and not from the brain of those distinguished per

sonages who have thus, unintentionally at least on their part, been immortalized.

Some speeches of Pontiac, a celebrated Ottowa chief, who at the close of the "Pontiac war" abandoned his former residence near Detroit, and came to Chicago, from whence he went down the Illinois river and was assassinated at an Indian council, by one of the Peoria tribe, are referred to as specimens of native eloquence; as also some of the Little Turtle's, who fought and was defeated by General Wayne at the Maumie, and of Tecumseh, who speaks of the battle of Tippecanoe as "the unfortunate transaction that took place between the white people, and a few of his young men ;" and of Weatherford, who was defeated by General Jack. son; and of Red Jacket and a host of others, left alone in their glory." No speech of Philip of Pokanoket is preserved. His eloquence consisted principally in action-and as that is said to be the first, and the second, and the third requisite of an orator, it must be conceded that he was eloquent, if his character in that respect is to be tested by the ancient rule. Although his action was somewhat different from the action so much admired in the orators of Greece and Rome, it was not less effective. Had Philip's return from the massacre of some New-England settlement, been emblazoned on the page of history, or had "the wizard of the north" told his story in poetic language, he would unquestionably have said:

"Proudly our pibroch has thrilled in Glen Fruin,
And Bannochar's groans to our slogan replied;
Glen Lus and Los Dhu they are smoking in ruin,
And the best of Loch Lomond lie dead on her side."

It was the misfortune, however, of Philip, as well as of other savage warriors, to have been painted by the man," and not by "the lion," or their respective positions might have been reversed. Instead of the lion being prostrated on the earth, and the man standing over him, the lion might have been uppermost.

When Tecumseh, boiling with rage, and driven to despair-and fear and hope were struggling for mastery in his lacerated bosom; and pride and obstinacy, ambition and revenge, were roused to the highest pitch of excitement, exclaims, in the language of his biographer: "Let them come then. I hear them-I see them in the south and in the east, like the summer leaves rolling and rustling in the breeze-it is well. Shall Tecumseh tremble? Shall they say that he hated the white men, and feared them? No! The mountains and plains which the Great Spirit gave, are behind and around me. I too have my warriors, and here

where we were born and where we will die-on the Sciota and the Wabash-on the broad waters of the north, my voice shall be heard!" we cannot but recognize the workings of a master-spirit, and in the language of Mr. Jefferson, and Gov. Clinton afterward when speaking of Logan, we may challenge the whole of Europe to produce a paragraph from any of their orators, surpassing it either in eloquence or pathos. Indeed, such

speeches were, to use an expression of Charlevoix, "Such as the Greeks admired in the barbarians;" such as Queen Elizabeth delivered to her army, when the Spanish Armada was hovering on her coasts. She did not speak to them of their ease, and their commerce, of their wealth, and their safety. No; she touched another chord, and spoke of their national honor of their dignity as Englishmen-of "the proud scorn, that Parma or Spain, should dare to invade the borders of her realms." She breathed into them those grand and powerful sentiments, which exalted the vulgar into heroes. Just so when Maria Theresa of Austria, unfurled her banner to the breeze, and summoned her brave Hungarians to arms.

That some passages in many of the Indian speeches as reported, are eloquent, all admit. To withhold from them our applause, would be to imitate the envious disposition of Goldsmith, the English poet, who, on seeing the performance of the automaton, and being unwilling to acknowledge any merit but his own, said peevishly, "he could do better himself." It will be recollected, however, that the occasion-the nature and character of the audience, and the end to be attained, all combine to make the orator. The speeches above alluded to, were delivered on occasions of great interest to the tribe or nation. The audience was composed of rude uncivilized warriors, smarting under a sense of injuries beyond human endurance-and the end to be attained was the reparation of some aggravated wrong, or the infliction of some extraordinary vengeance. Any unlettered man in civilized life, situated as these orators were, would, by relating his simple story, in the plainest possible manner, electrify a modern congregation; or as Cicero would say, rouse the stones of Rome to mutiny." When Pierce was killed on board the Chesapeak, previous to the late war with England, and his corpse was exposed in the city of New-York upon the battery, it was with difficulty the American people were restrained from violence. Savage eloquence is always simple and figurative. It is the simplicity of the Scriptures that gives them such a charm, and renders them the most eloquent productions in our language. In 1386, England was nearly convulsed by the repetition of such poetry as this:

"When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman ?"

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Had not the great mass at that time been oppressed by England's haughty aristocracy-had not the insolence of office been too apparent, and the minions of power planted thorns and briers in their path; Watt Tyler, at the head of an armed multitude, could never have marched to London -broken into the Tower-murdered in cold blood the primate and chancellor, and other persons of distinction, and extorted from the king, (Richard II.) privileges (though reasonable) which had before been withheld. Nor could a Philip of Pokanoket, or a Pontiac, or a Tecum