We must proceed with this romance of savage proper he should go to the great chief (Major life, as told by Mr. McKenney, in a private letter Whistler,) and that so far as Mr. Marsh's presto Mr. Barbour, the then secretary of war. The wildness of the incident acquires an additional local color from the prosy and florid style of American narration, which we would not destroy or lessen. The reader, then, must excuse something of prolixity, for the sake of character.

feathers and horse hair, dyed red, and the bills of | ward from the centre of the line, when Major birds, &c., whilst in one hand he held the white Whistler stepping aside, the Red Bird and Weflag, and in the other the pipe of peace."

kaw marched through the line, in charge of a file We hope our readers have catholicity enough of men, to a tent that had been provided in the to excuse this Grandisonian minuteness, marvel- rear, over which a guard was set. The comrades lous in a people so given to going a-head as the of the two captives then left the ground by the Americans. But if such is the taste of their Con- way they had come, taking with them our advice, gress orations, how shall their national literature and a supply of meat and flour. (!!!) escape? The sentimental touches in the passage The Red Bird does not appear to be which follows (little needed, let us observe, by a thirty, yet he is said to be over forty scene intrinsically poetic and pathetic) are as-Vol. iii., pp. 36 to 39. oddly characteristic of the most utilitarian nation under the sun, as the above anxious enumeration of the poor Red Bird's toilette trumperies.

"There he stood. He moved not a muscle, nor once changed the expression of his face. They were told to sit down. He sat down with a grace not less captivating than he walked and stood (!!) At this moment the band on our right struck up Pleyel's hymn when the hymn was played, he took up his pouch, and taking from it some kinnakanie or tobacoo, cut the latter after the Indian fashion, then rubbed the two together, filled the bowl of his beautiful peace pipe, struck fire with his steel and flint into a bit of spunk, and lighted it and smoked.

"I could not but speculate a little on his dress. His white jacket, with one piece of red upon it, appeared to indicate the purity of his past life, stained with but a single crime; for all agree that the Red Bird had never before soiled his fingers with the blood of the white man, or committed a bad action. His war-pipe, bound close to his heart, appeared to indicate his love of war, which was now no longer to be gratified. Perhaps the red or scarlet cloth may have been indicative of his name, the Red Bird."

The above receives a last touch of whimsicality little meditated, as being subscribed by one who "writes in haste."

66 #

The Red Bird died in prison. We-kaw, as generally happens to the confidant, alias the shabbier fellow, and greater rascal of the two, was let off: and comes in, moreover, for a reputation. There are desperate difficulties, we know, inherent in the subject The uniform of "Major Whistler and his men" are sad stumbling-blocks in any painter's way, as Horace Vernet could tell us; and it would require consummate tact to rescue the heroic Red Bird and the sneaking degraded We-kaw if drawn out in all their bravery as described, from certain May-day and masquerade associations, which no sane artist would care to conjure up. Still we hold that an Allston would have been more honorably and profitably employed, as concerns Art, in trying to harmonize such objects as these, and thus to add to the world's stores of beauty-than in measuring himself against the ancients by once again painting "Jacob's Dream," or entering the lists against the beauty-painters, who, like "most women, have no character at all," by devoting time, pains-aye, and poetical thought, too-to his "Rosalie listening to Music," or to the thousandth presentiment of "Lorenzo and Jessica," the best how infinitely below Shakspeare !

Let us now turn to the portraits, and the anecdotage which accompanies them. The first is properly enough that of "Red Jacket," as the white men chose to call the "Keeper Awake" of the Senecas. Is there not " an acted bull” in this portrait-an inconsistency which ought not to have escaped the projectors of a national work! "Red Jacket" was a professed hater of the white men-a contemner, we are expressly told, of their institutions-the point of "disdaining to use any language save his own." Yet here is this stickler for his nationality handed down to posterity, in the blue coat and Washington medal of those he abominated! It is true that all over the world we could find other portraits of the uncompromising, in like apparel, were we to seek! "Kishkalwa," the second subject in the gallery-nominally and legally head of the Shawanoe nation, is a far more genuine-looking personage, at least in a picture:

"All sat, except the speakers, whose addresses I took down. * * They were in substance that they had been required to bring in the murderers. They had no power over any except two, and these had voluntarily agreed to come and give themselves up. As their friends they had come with them. They hoped their white brothers would agree to receive the horses, (they had with them twenty, perhaps,) meaning, that if accepted, it should be in commutation for the lives of their two friends. They asked kind treatment for them, earnestly begged that they might not be put in irons; that they should all have something to eat, and tobacco to smoke. We advised them to warn their people against killing ours, and endeavoring also to impress them with a proper conception of the extent of our power, and of their weakness, &c. Having heard this, the Red Bird stood up; the commanding officer, Major Whistler, a few paces in advance of the centre of his line, facing him. After a pause of a minute, and a rapid survey of the troops, and a firm composed observation of his people, the Red Bird said, looking at Major Whistler, I am ready.' Then, advancing a step or two, he paused and added, 'I do not wish to be *The "Book of Offences" (a work which, by the way, put in irons, let me be free. I have given my subject) would receive some of its most curious pages we beg to commend to some comic moralist in search of life, it is gone,' (stooping down and taking some from the history of savage life. It is intelligible enough dust between his finger and thumb, and blowing it that the loss of a virile garment should be a sore subject away,) like this I would not have it among people particularly touchy in point of valor; but back. It is gone.' He threw his hands behind while the crotchet passes through our brains, we cannot thi, to indicate that he was braving all things be- resist a far less serious anecdote of Indian offence, which has always struck us as alike whimsical and inexplicable. hind him, and marched up to Major Whistler, When the Ojibbeway party was in London, a party was breast to breast. A platoon was wheeled back-made (after the fashion of Mrs. Leo Hanter's) for

66

*

his nose garnished with a crescent-shaped ring; his ears with cruel-looking appendages; his head with a comb or top-knot of scarlet feathers (with a few civilized "odds and ends" of riband,) as bristling_with_defiance as Chanticleer Bantam's own! This fiery personage seems to have understood a joke* as little as the editor of " My Grand

a

mother's Review," in the days of Byron. Being dress, like the prophet minus an eye, gives his jeered on the laying aside of his one garment biographers occasion to relieve his tribe from the during certain warlike operations, as though he stigma which has been laid upon it, of a vice no had been a coward who had dropped his "ineffa- less loathsome than cannibalism. The name of bles" while running away, he undertook a foray the Keoxa tribe, to which he belongs, meaning or razzia, to wipe away this stain on his charac-"relationship overlooked," implies marriages forter :-and it was one of the express conditions of bidden in the last leaf of the prayer-book; and one the peace which followed his victorious arms, admitted practice of questionable reputation (for sealed by the present of a beautiful young lady, even among savages it is curious to observe how that Kishkalwa's "vestment" (to quote the precise constantly the dawnings of moral perception touch noun which transatlantic scrupulosity enjoins) the same points) may have led to false accusations should, indeed, be henceforth remembered among of another. The Twighees and the Kickapoos the" unmentionables." "Shingaba W'Ossin; or, (vide vol. iii., p. 26) will hardly come out from Image Stone," a Chippewa Indian, has, also, a under the accusation so easily. We are assured fine unsophisticated head; though, unlike "Red that they had a society expressly ordained for Jacket," he was so far in advance of his tribe, as the maintenance of the practice: possibly-who to encourage investigation with regard to a Mani- knows?-their Hieroglyphic Human Cookery tou or object sanctified by superstition-the huge Book! Nathless, let us charitably point out, that mass of virgin copper, known to all mineralogists exact information on subjects like these-where and American tourists as existing on the Outano-credulous horror and cunning ignorance meet, the gon River, Lake Superior. A famous subject, one as willing to be mystified as the other is anxtoo, for the painter, though in a transition state ious to mystify-comprehends precisely that branch between the "osprey wing" style of dress and the of testimony which is to be least relied upon. adoption of the militia uniform, is Tenskautawaw Ferocity or revenge may drive untutored people "The Open Door.' Though described as a into exceptional crimes; and the extreme relueperson of slender intellects, weak, cruel, and sen-tance to admit the fact, which all savages have sual; despite, too, the loss of an eye, this person-ever shown, would argue a sort of instinctive age had a bland and agreeable presence. Brother averseness, which warrants our generally receiv to the well known Chief Tecumthe, "The Open Door" enjoys an almost equal renown as a proAs we advance in the volume, we get deeper phet. When we read in these Indian annals of a and deeper into the wilderness, as it were-among hit so lucky as his fixing the precise day for an wilder people. Some of the heads are very fierce, earthquake, and recollect how on no stronger initiating us into the mysteries of Indian paint. grounds our gentry believed in Murphy, (not to Wesh Cubb, "The Sweet,"-whose son was recall the more humiliating trust of their tenantry seized with the vagary of fancying himself a in the Canterbury fanatic,) we must not appropri- woman, and devoting himself to the degradation ate" The Open Door's" success as a trait of sav- of feminine employments-has a most becoming age life, so much as of universal credulous human-crescent of green spots upon his cheeks :-Caatouity. We only protest against the "slenderness" see, or "Creeping out of the Water,' a square allotted to his wits. The biographers, however, patch of yet brighter verdigris, in which one cruel attribute the contrivance of the juggle to Tecum-eye is set as cleanly as a bead in a patch of enamel. the, who, among his other schemes of assisting Peah-Mus-Ka, a Fox chief (whose barbette à la Indian rights and regenerating Indian morals, in- Pischek makes a whimsical disturbance of our cluding even a temperance movement, perceived that supernatural influences would make an important figure. Even a puppet, however, must be in some degree stoutly and symmetrically framed to answer to the jerk of the master's hand. And we can hardly reconcile such an assertion as that the prophet was pronounced by General Harrison to have been the most graceful and accomplished orator he had seen amongst the Indians, with the following paragraph, in which we are told that "he seems to have exhibited neither honesty nor dignity of character in any relation of life." The tale of Tecumthe, however, is one of the best in the collection-full of subject.

The portrait of Waapashaw, chief the Dacotah nation, a sagacious looking man, in an European

ing tales of the systematized practice cum grano.

visions of prairies, portages, and other features of wild life in the West,) has his black handkerchief cap tied on, as it were, by a streak of vermilion under the chin, by which also his ear is dyed. While we are on the subject of aboriginal "paint and patches," commend us to No-way-ke-sug-ga, the Otoe chief, whose portrait is to be found early in volume the third, and whose citron green chin, with a Vandyke pattern of the same piquant nuance across his forehead, " composes" with the superb cherry-colored plume of horse-hair or feathers upon his head, so as to form an arrangement of color of which a Parisian designer of fancies might be proud. There is somewhat of caprice, we are told, in these decorations-a caprice, it seems, constant in the avoidance of the stars and stripes," though not seldom awkwardly emulating the lines of "the Union Jack ;"--but we take it for granted, something of symbolism also. And in these days, when reds and blues are mere matters of faith and orthodoxy, when the cut of an the piano forte player, and by way of aurecole, or the frilling and flouncing of an initial ascertaining what amount of musical ear the distinguish-letter, becomes subjects concerning which homilies ed strangers possessed, he was requested to perform a fantasia. He complied; the Indians sate, all attention, are preached, and libraries written-we must not to the very end. But, then, rising up very gravely and be thought absurd in recommending to American with some ceremony, they left the room; went down savans, "the nature and significance of Indian stairs to the parlor on the ground floor, resisting all en- paint," as a mystery worth looking into, for the treaties; and there seating themselves on the floor, use of historians and artists yet unborn. Out of waited in dignity the appointed hour of departure. They accidents little less freakish, we take it, did the had been affronted :-nothing further, we believe, was ever explained. whole school of what is by some called Christian

"Tobacco," the "Driving Cloud," and the rest of the company: not forgetting the ladies. Their behavior was pronounced to be most discreet and easy; it seemed, too, that they enjoyed themselves. But in an evil hour arriv

ed Mr.

art, originally construct itself. At all events, there is now some possibility of obtaining information on these important matters-though at the risk of depriving controversialists in embryo of their life-breath; to wit, matter for controversy. To speak, meanwhile, of a matter of detail, in its order, important-we are surprised that in a work like this, so carefully and expensively produced, greater descriptive minuteness was not thought necessary. There are many accessories and objects introduced into these portraits, which we neither know how to describe or to name. This ought not to have been.

pose of "calling up a look," which should take mankind by storm-were gentle and easily-contented customers compared with the braves and the medicine men, whom the founders of the school of American art have been called upon to immortalize. Mr. Catlin, in his "Letters and Notes," gave us some whimsical and touching details of the "relations" which the court painter of the Indians has to hold with his sitters. Who has forgotten the anecdote of the chief who came to the artist's tent, with an offer of six horses, and as much treasure besides as the magician chose to exact, so he might bear away the portrait of his dead daughter? The portraying of a Sioux chief, Mah-to-cheeja," the Little Bear"-in profile, led to yet more serious results. Mr. Catlin had to pack up his brushes and run to save his scalp; since Shonka, "the Dog," found out that the

man!" The Red Men, as we have seen, do not love jests. The Dog's taunt bred an affray which cost the Little Bear his life. The volumes before us afford us an addition to the above store of anecdotes: which, ere we part from them, we shall extract :-though conscious that it makes against us, and for those who consider the squaw a less suffering woman than the Mrs. Caudles, Mrs. Grundys, and Mrs. Partingtons of our streets and squares, and village-greens.

The portrait of a Rant-che-wai-me," Female flying Pigeon," also called "the beautiful female eagle who flies in the air," reminds us that we have been somewhat remiss in paying our dues to the gentle sex. But this is true forest fashion. The lady before us is mild and gracious looking."Little Bear," thus presented, was "only half a We were told she was free-handed to an excess : as her widowed husband phrased it, "when the poor came, it was like a strainer full of holes, letting all she had pass through." She was extreme, moreover, in her tenderness of her conscience," often feared that her acts were displeasing to the Great Spirit, when she would blacken her face and retire to some lone place, and fast and pray. But we take it that so far as any grace which free-will gives can go, "the Female flying Pigeon" was rather an exceptional than an average "It happened," says the memorialist of Young woman. It is true that, in her charming "Win- Mahaskah, the son of the Female flying Pigeon, ter Studies and Summer Rambles," Mrs. Jame-"when Mahaskah was at Washington, that the son, whose honorable desire to improve the condition of her sex, sometimes leads her into odd puzzles and paradoxes, does her best for the squaw; trying to prove her condition in some essential points far better than that of the conventionalized white woman, (as the jargon of the day runs.) And we suppose that social philosophers on the other side of the argument-the powertheorists to wit-would declare that man's ministering angel was in her right place, when hewing wood and drawing water, drudging in the fields, and dragging burdens, leaving "her master" undisturbed in the nobler occupations of fighting and foraging. But we confess that we are a trifle hard to convince as to the supreme felicity of the Indian woman's lot. The utmost her race has done has been to produce, not a Boadicea, but a Pocahontas. Of this last," the heroine of the tribes," we have somewhat too niggardly a notice. There is a portrait of her, however, in her civilized condition, which an appendical series of documents assure us is authentic; the features wearing an expression of grave and womanly sweetness, befitting one whose name was somewhat prophetically "a rivulet of peace between two nations."

But this is not the time or place for us to argue out the great question of the lady and the lord, to determine how far (as Cherub says) nature never meant that a Griseldis should be put to the test by her Sir Perceval, or vice versa. Ample opportunities to hear new wisdom against old prejudice are sure to present themselves! The mention of "authentication" and its accompanying assertion that all these portraits are warrantable, recalls to us yet another of the curious peculiarities of savage life namely, great solicitude and touchiness in the delicate matter of resemblances painted. Queen Elizabeth herself, with her royal command of "garden lights," and similar devices which excluded shadows, and other such unpleasing accidents-Lady Pentweazle, when big with the pur

agent of this work was there also.
As he
turned over the leaves bearing the likenesses of
many of those Indians of the Far West, who were
known to the party, Mahaskah would pronounce
their names with the same promptitude as if the
originals were alive and before him. Among
these was the likeness of his father. He looked
at it with a composure bordering on indifference.
On being asked if he did not know his father, be
answered, pointing to the portrait, 'That is my
father.' He was asked if he was not glad to see
him. He replied, 'It was enough for me to
know that my father was a brave man, and had a
big heart, and died an honorable death in doing the
will of my Great Father."

66 *

The portrait of the Eagle of Delight, wife of Shaumonekusse, the Ottoe chief, was then shown to him. That,' he said, 'is my mother.' The agent assured him he was mistaken. He became indignant, and seemed mortified that his mother, as he believed her to be, should be arranged in the work as the wife of another, and especially of a chief over whom his father had held and exercised authority. The colloquy became interesting, until, at last, some excitement, on the part of Mahaskah, grew out of it. On hearing it repeated by the agent that be must be mistaken, Mahaskah turned and looked him in the face, saying. Did you ever know the child that loved its mother, and had seen her, that forgot the board on which he was strapped, and the back on which he had been carried, or the knee on which he had been nursed, or the breast which had given him life? So firmly convinced was he that this was the picture of his mother, and so resolved that she should not remain by the side of Shaumonekusse, that he said, 'I will not leave this room, until my mother's name, Rantchewaime, is marked over the name of Eagle of Delight.' The agent of the work complied with this demand, when his agitation, which had become great, sub

sided, and he appeared contented. Looking once | And this steam, in its time, plays many parts, more at the painting, he turned from it, saying, If it had not been for Waucondamony (the name he gave to the agent of the work, which means walking god, so called, because he attributed the taking of these likenesses to him,) I would have kissed her, but Waucondamony made me ashamed."

6

Its acts being Seven Ages. At first, the kettle,
Hissing and sputtering on a kitchen hob,
And then Newcomen's engine, to its piston,
By atmospheric pressure, giving force
Imperfectly to pump: Then Watt's condenser,
More economic, with its stuffing-box
And double-acting movement: Then a steam-boat,
Full of strange smells, and crammed like Noah's
ark,

"Soon after this interview, the party went to King's Gallery, where are copies of many of these likenesses, and among them are both the Eagle (It, on high pressure, sudden and quick to exof Delight' and the Female flying Pigeon. The plode,) moment Mahaskah's eye caught the portrait of the Raising up Fulton's reputation 'Flying Pigeon,' he exclaimed, 'That is my mo- In everybody's mouth: Then the steam-horse, ther, that is her face, I know her now, I am By Stephenson devised, on Wall's End fed, ashamed again.' He immediately asked to have a With boiler grimed and-wheels of clumsy cut, copy of it, as also of the Eagle of Delight,' wife Spurning brass knobs and copper ornamentsof Shaumonekusse, saying of the last, The And so he plays his part: The Sixth Age shifts Ottoe chief will be so glad to see his squaw, that Into the war of broad and narrow gauge;' he will give me one hundred horses for it.'" Brunel on one, Hudson on t' other sideTheir several lines stretching a world too wide For the Committee's and Steam's manly voice That in the kettle's childish treble piped, Now whistles o'er the world: Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is general brotherhood, and mere oblivion Of troops, of wars, of blood, and all such things." Punch.

There are others, more competent judges of art than simple Mahaskah, will occur to every reader with whom (no offence to their connoisseurships) "the fan" makes the likeness.

It will be easily gathered, from the above hasty notes and illustrations, that to comment upon the entire contents of these volumes would lead the critic beyond all reasonable limits. Having given a fair sample, we must here pause. A parting word is, perhaps, required to assure certain excellent persons, that because we have treated this work crotchet-wise, rather than in the cut and dry

86

Encyclopedia" fashion; no disrespect to it has been meant. On the contrary, there are certain subjects more vividly brought home to us by familiar treatment and comparison, than by dissertations ex cathedrâ: and this is among them. The book is a most interesting collection of raw materials, out of which a school of imaginative art might be constructed; but to lecture upor them, appealing the while to "the principle of the pyramid," would be to impugn our own common sense, and not to assist either teachers or people. We regard it as a valuable addition to the American's library:-and as full of suggestion to all persons who love to look around and forward as well as to linger with fond reverence among the traditions of the past.

THE POETRY OF STEAM.

"MR. PUNCH,

SIR,-Being a stoker, it is natural I should feel enthusiastic on the subject of steam. It appears to me, sir, that Mr. Wordsworth makes a great mistake when he talks of steamers and railways as

Motions and means on land and sea, at war
With old poetic feeling.'

For my own part, I think there's a deal more po-
etry in steam-engines than in anything else, except
men and women. I have tried my hand at a de-
scription of the Seven Ages of Steam, after Shak-
speare, and venture to send it to you to show the
world and my brother stokers that there is some
poetry about us.

"Yours respectfully,

JOHN COKE."

"The world's ruled by steam, And all the men and women are its subjects: It guides their movements and their whereabouts;

THE AGGRIEVED PROFESSORS.

To the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and to the learned Corporations and Societies of England at large,

The Humble Petition of us, the undersigned respectable Scientific Men and Philosophers Natural and Moral;

SHEWETH. That your Petitioners belong to a class of persons from whom, at Colleges and Institutions for the advancement of Science and Literature, Lecturers and other Teachers are selected :

That such individuals, in their official capacity, are commonly styled Professors:

That certain other individuals, in divers advertisements, and in sundry bills, placards, and posters, have of late assumed and added to their names the title or appellation of Professor; and that by the said appellation or title of Professor they have procured themselves to be commonly called and known:

That of these individuals, some are teachers of dancing, others fiddlers, and others posture-masters, not to say mountebanks; that others of them, again, are Professors of pills and ointment, and that one of them hath lately announced himself to the world as Professor of a ventilating peruke:

That, from thus serving to denote dancing-masters, and fiddlers, and players of monkeys' tricks, and quack-salvers, and barbers, the name of Professor hath acquired a significancy which rendereth it anything but a creditable one.

Your Petitioners, therefore, have humbly to request that you will find some other title for your Lecturers and Teachers than this same denomination of Professor; which your said Petitioners do object to share with the kind of persons above mentioned.

And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, &c.
(Here follow the signatures.)
Punch.