tribe of the Aborigines on the continent; except only, that the Brotherton Indians have so long used English, as to have lost their mother tongue. The probable reason, that the Brothertons have dropped the language of their tribe is, that nearly all of them are highly charged with English blood. But in the moral state of society, and in general improvement, the Brothertons are far behind the Stockbridges. The Brothertons have not enjoyed the same uninterrupted succession of teachers of the Christian religion.

In the place of worship of these people, and deposited in a sort of ark, Mr. Colton found two folio volumes, which proved to be a Bible, printed at Oxford, in 1717, with a splendid type. The vos lumes were beautifully and richly bound, and contained an inscrip+ tion, from which it appeared that they were a gift of an English clergyman. The inscription was couched in these terms: "This, with another volume, containing the Holy Bible, is the pious gift of the Rev. Dr. Francis Ayscouth (Clerk of the Closet to His Royal Highness, Frederick, Prince of Wales) to the use of the congregation of Indians, at or near Housatonnac, in the vast wil derness of New England, who are at present under the voluntary care and instruction of the learned and religious Mr. John Sergeant, and is to remain to the use of the successors of those Indians, from generation to generation, as a testimony of the said Doctor's great regard for the salvation of their souls. And is over and above other benefits, which he most cheerfully obtained for the encouragement of the said Mr. Sergeant, and in favour of the said Indians, at the request of their hearty friend and wellwisher,-THOMAS CORAN.-London, the 31st of December 1795." On the sabbath, Mr. Colton was struck with the most pleasing emotions, at witnessing the conduct of the people on that day; never indeed could he have expected to come into this wilderness, so called, and among these savages, so esteemed, to enjoy a Christian Sabbath, without witnessing a single impropriety, among a whole people of this description;-to see the congregation, the parents with their children, "and the stranger within their gates," going up to the house of God in company; seating themselves with a reverence and decorum, that might shame many communities, calling themselves civilized, and professing Christianity; listening with fixed and unrelaxed attention to all the public services, many of them demonstrating a thorough religious abstraction and absorption; and when their hearts and conscience were appealed to, in the application of the subject of discourse, showing a depth and quickness of feeling, which agitated their bosoms, and forced a passage through the watery channels of the eye. And then to attend the Sabbath school, reduced to all the order and discipline, which characterise the best schools of this sort in the white settlements ;-superintended, indeed, by the Missionaries, but employing the adult natives, as instructors, who engaged

in their work with a ready aptitude and apparent satisfaction:→→ this, too, was a scene unexpected and grateful beyond my power to express.

The instruction was well conveyed in the English language, and Mr. Colton declares, that, had he been brought in blindfolded, he would have supposed that he was listening to a congregation of whites. The costume of the people, as he was able to examine it in the place of worship, was of a description, half-way, he states, between the European habit and that of the wild tribes; measuring not inaptly the degree of their civilization: the women, for the most part, especially the matrons, wearing the old-fashioned English short gown and petticoat, with scarlet gaiters, and buckskin moccasins, tastefully inwrought with beads, with the whiteman's beaver hat, and some gaudy ribband for a band, which often hangs pendant down the back, nearly to the ground. Some of the younger females were dressed nearly to the top of the English fashion-always exhibiting, however, some laughable incongruities. The men seldom wear hats-and their dress is also ori dinarily midway between the European and Indian modes. The flaps of their frock hang out to meet the trowsers, or high gaiters, which terminate half way from the knee to the hip bone, and which are supported by strings attached to the upper garments. They are generally closely girded by a sash of wampum or beaded mantle, the ends of which are pendant, like the sash of a military. officer. The children are set off in a show of slight variations from the appearances of adults. As among civilized people, the standing in society, the degrees of respectability and domestic wealth, are marked in dress, by varying degrees of richness and taste. Some of the men, as well as women, are dressed in all respects after the European plainer modes.

The order of public worship amongst these tribes is secured with no very trifling bulwarks, as will be inferred from the fact that the beadle of the chapel is enjoined to use his staff for the purpose of jogging the recollection of the Indians, whenever they become so profane as to idolize Morpheus, instead of listening to the preacher. The staff in this case appears to have been a green switch, about ten feet long, which the beadle had cut on his road the same morning. There was no playing of boys, or nodding of adults, under the vigilant surveillance of the indefatigable functionary; and when a man or woman was seen with closed eyes, the big end of the instrument was struck against the stone pipe over head, and the sound which it emitted, resembling that of a bell, with the startling cry of the beadle, always acted as irresistible antidotes to the influence of the deity of sleep. The most impartial of the avengers of the law is the beadle of the Stockbridge tribe, for he spares neither father nor mother, wife or children, from the lash of his inflexible justice.

The digression which led Mr. Colton into the descriptions of

this tribe being concluded, we return with him to the account which he resumes of the further proceedings of the United States! commissioners. It was not until twelve days had elapsed after their arrival at Green Bay, that they succeeded in bringing the Indians together for the purpose of holding the council. During the interval, runners, as they are called, were dispatched to all the tribes, interested in the public deliberations about to be opened, to notify them of the time, place, and object of the convention. They were formally served with copies of letters from their great Father, the President of the United States, assuring them of his good wishes, and of his desire to bring all their disputes to an amicable and satisfactory adjustment; and that for this purpose he had sent Erastus Root, John T. Mason, and James M'Call, good and true men, to hold a talk with his children in the NorthWest, who had quarrelled among themselves, and asked their great Father's mediations;-to hear all they might have to say on either side; to recommend peace and a just settlement of their disputes; to remove all occasions of the improper interference of their great Father's white children;-and then to come back to the Council-house of the great nation at Washington, and say: "All the sores are healed." And this would give their great Father much happiness.

Mr. Colton presents to us a highly picturesque account of the arrangements made by the Indians for the convocation. In the river were seen crowds of canoes hastening from all directions, and filled, not only with men, women, and children, but also with tackle of all sorts, particularly with the materials for building lodges, or Indian residences. The day before the holding of the assembly, the banks of the river on either side within a mile of the spot where the council was to be held, were nearly completely occupied by these lodges, teeming with men and women, children, dogs, pet-bears, pet-foxes, &c. The Indian lodge, as it appeared to the author on this occasion, was neither larger nor higher than a soldier's tent. Its fashion and the show of it are described as very unsightly; covered with large sheets of birch bark, and encircled by a wall composed perhaps of a yard-wide matting, woven from some coarse vegetable substance, not unlike bulrush. Some of the lodges are entirely open to the weather. The ground is their floor and their bed, except as some of them can afford a piece of matting ;-the blanket the ordinary and principal article of clothing, except as parts of the person are concealed by some slight and loose articles of undress. Females, that can afford it, are fond of gaudy and glaring calicoes, for a short gown; and will tie around them a yard square of blue woollen, for a petticoat, without a stitch bestowed upon it; the list, or border, running around the bottom, being regarded as ornamental. The addition of a pair of scarlet gaiters, buck-skin moccasins, a string of beads, and beaver hat, would make a perfect lady. But few are seen making such

!

an extravagant show. Displays of this sort belong to the privíleged orders.

But Mr. Colton had soon reason to ascertain the demoralizing effects of these large meetings; he considers them, from his experience on this occasion, as capable of producing the greatest degradation of morals, for it is not simply a season of dissipation, but it is a time of absolute and of uninterrupted riot, and this is the riot of intoxication and debauchery. Mr. Colton, as a sincere Christian, solemnly protests against the practice, which the government alone is responsible for, of multiplying these meetings, or allowing them at all: he states that the Indian comes to such a place with his family. On the 24th of August, the grand convocation was held. The commissioners, with all due ceremony and decorum, took their seats supported by their secretaries; directly in front of them, and face to face, the Indian chiefs arranged themselves with such formalities as were peculiar to each of the tribes, and which proved rather comical and somewhat amusingto the American portion of the spectators. The chiefs of one of the tribes, the Menomenies, were not at their post in proper time, and were therefore sent for; but they declined coming until it was their convenience. The Court expressed its impatience, and so did the multitude. At length they appeared in a slow procession, and after a great many mysticle movements on their way they at length took their seats in the convention. The assemblage being now completed, the scene formed by the immense contribution of multitudes from all quarters presented an imposing aspect, such as made a strong impression on Mr. Colton, at least we are inclined to say as much after the account which he has drawn up for this strange spectacle, and which we now transcribe.

We must premise that the Council-fire was dispensed with on this occasion for some reason with which the author was not made acquainted; but the calumet, the pipe of peace, an indispensable preliminary was introduced. The bowl of the pipe employed on this occasion was made of silver; it was stuck to a tube four feet long; it was solemnly filled with tobacco, and solemnly lighted, and solemly presented to the President of the Court, who solemnly took one solemn whiff; and then with the same solemnity it was passed to the second and third members of the Court, who solemnly puffed in their turn; but all with a grace and dignity, infinitely inferior to the manner of the chiefs. The latter understood it. But the Court, alas! were extremely awkward and embarrassed. But when it came to the chiefs successively, it was a sublime sight! The scene, as we were just about to take it, on the authority of Mr. Colton, was as follows:

I dare to say, that such another congregation of human beings was scarcely ever assembled, as the commonalty of the Indians, and the various degrees of mixed blood that crowded around, as spectators. There was every shade and feature of French and Indian, under the same skin;

and every incongruous combination of dress upon them, from the first corruption of European fashion, down to the purest Indian. And there was the naked savage; (all naked, except two small aprons of twelve inches. square, one before and one behind); some covered only with a blanket, thrown over the shoulders, or else carelessly tucked around the waist, leaving the up per part of the body and the arms exposed; many of them looking as if they had neither been washed, nor combed, since they were born; not a few bedaubed in paints of all colours, from the most glaring red, down to shades as black as Erebus; and their eyes sparkling and flashing like the startled snake, from under a countenance so awfully disfigured; the whole being a fair representation of the worst pictures, that imaginastion has drawn, of the Evil One; some with one side of the face red, and -the other black; others showing a great variety of colours, most fantastically thrown together; one with one feather in the hair, another with two, vor more, and some with twenty, or less; part of them sitting under the pavillion, part standing without, and part lying down in the open, plain supon their breasts, with their heads sticking up, like snakes, from the grass; all furnished with pipes, of their own manufacture, varying in length from four feet to four inches, and a tobacco-pouch made of the skin of some animal, in which is also carried an apparatus for striking fire every one girt with a cincture about his loins, to which was suspended a knife in its scabbard, devoted to all the imaginable purposes of a knife;that is to cut his tobacco, to whittle a stick, to dress his game, to eat with, to scalp his enemy, &c. &c. In the hand of each Indian is always to be seen, besides his pipe, a bow and arrow, or tomahawk, or rifle, or weapon of some description; more generally his tomahawk is his pipe, the head serving as the bowl, and the handle for the stem, it being bored into a tube ;-and nameless other appearances did this assemblage exhibit, which language is inadequate to describe:all waiting to see and hear. : p. 231-233.

A full account of the proceedings follows with specifications of the speeches, particularly of the Indians. The object of the commission, however, was defeated after an incessant debate of eight days; the only result being, according to Mr. Colton, the development of Indian character and Indian wrongs.

to Mr. Colton took occasion to pursue his inquiries into the maniners and customs of the Indians still further, having been ex-ceedingly interested in their condition by all that he had hitherto known of the race. From even his brief experience of them he is enabled to say that no one can be in their neighbourhood for a little time without having his attention challenged to the drumming, which goes on from morning to night, in some quarter or another in his neighbourhood. Whilst this instrument is em!ployed in Europe as an excitant of battle, amongst the Indians of North America it serves a very opposite purpose. The Indian makes use of it to soothe and relieve the suffering, and to rescue the dying from the grave. He makes it a medicine of the soul, and of the body. When all the other powers of the healing art have failed, and the patient still declines, the Indian's last resort is to the magic influence of the drum and dance. All the family