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UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF CIVILIZATION.

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conjectures, founded upon frail and insufficient testimony. It is sufficient to call to mind the fact that the body of evidence which has been collected by inquirers, seems to lead to the conclusion that the population of America commenced in the north, and proceeded by slow degrees; that the flow of population at first rolled southward; and that the Mexicans, whose advance in the arts of life would appear almost miraculous, were we not acquainted with China and Japan, are supposed to have overcome another nation, also further advanced in civilization than the Indians of the northern part of the country at the time of its discovery by Europeans. Further we cannot go, except so far as to determine that all the various tribes who people the whole extent of North and South America, (with the exception of the Esquimaux, who probably came from the eastward,) even to the dark-skinned Patagonians and cramp-limbed | Fuegians, are, although differing in various degrees from each other, descended from the same stockfrom the Tartar tribes of the central table-lands of Asia-and that the variations among them did not all arise, although many have been increased, in America. The different habits of life of the dweller in the forest, the hunter of the prairies, the fisherman who spends his life in his canoe, and the poor root-digger, debarred by his conquerors from the chase, and forced to pick a scanty living from the plants of the field-all produce striking varieties, mental and bodily; and yet, by the force of true civilization, even the most degraded race may gradually be restored to the noblest standard which human nature is capable of attaining.

The original emigrants were in all probability members of different tribes, first separated on their ancestral plains by the same causes that have increased their distinctive qualities in an adopted country. So lately as the winter of 1833, a Japanese junk was wrecked on the North-west coast of America, in the neighbourhood of Queen Charlotte's Island. Most of the crew, who were weak and exhausted by the unlooked-for duration of a voyage for which they were ill provided, were slain by the natives; but two fell into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, who sent them to their establishment at Vancouver on the Columbia | River, and thence to England. Of their subsequent fate the writer of this paper knows nothing; but this one fact, coupled with the statement of the Jesuit Charlevoix-who records two instances of Indians being met with in Tartary-is sufficient to establish the possibility of a very early communication between the two continents.

Thus from time to time a few individuals, a family, and not improbably occasionally a whole tribe, have been accidentally driven, or have purposely passed over from North Eastern Asia to the opposite shores of America, and thence spreading

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eastwards and southwards, gradually peopled the whole land; even as in those ages, when Egypt and Greece were yet in their glory, a silent emigration from the Tartarian plains was going on, by which the north of Europe was filled with nations brave in battle and cruel in conquest, and not unlike in other particulars to the Indians of America or the Huns of Attila.

The character of the North American Indians, to whom we shall for the present confine ourselves, has alternately been the theme of exaggerated panegyric and unlimited obloquy. The "noble savage" has been held up as the model of all that was brave and manly; his skill, his patience, his fortitude, and his daring, have not been unjustly praised. But his savage deeds of blood have been held sufficient cause to execrate and hunt him down as if he were indeed a wild beast, and possessed not human feelings and affections, although far from deficient in those nobler attributes of our nature. Nor, in estimating the character of the savage from his actions, should we forget that professing and even sincere Christians have held it right to shoot down the wild Indian as a dog, or without pity to consign him to hopeless slavery in the West Indies-sad facts, too well authenticated by the records of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Still when we behold an ardent patriot-a term not unadvisedly applied-an affectionate husband, a fond father, a sincere friend, bowing down his intellect to the mummery of a "Medicine-man," murdering women and children in cold blood, and enjoying the tortures of his enemy as he roasts in agony at the stake, we fall back aghast at the contemplation of the revolting exhibition.

When we recollect that the Indians, so far from being inclined to yield to mere argument when reproached with their barbarous customs, justify themselves with considerable acuteness and some show of reason, that their conduct is not the result of mere brutal stupidity, but is the choice of men of equal mental power with ourselves, and in many points displaying qualities which must command our respect, we receive a lesson which should teach us humility, and make the veriest sceptic admit it to be necessary that the Gospel of Peace should lend its aid ere human nature can plant one foot firmly forward on the path of civilization.

In such reflections it may not be uninstructive to give a glance at some of the characteristic habits and customs of the Indians. We find among them all a distinct idea of a future state of rewards and punishments; of a creator, the Great Spirit, the fountain of good; and of an Evil Spirit, his enemy and the enemy of man; both of whom may be influenced by prayer and acceptable sacrifice. A more remarkable fact still is the tradition current, in one shape or another, among all the tribes of both Americas, of the Deluge. No one can have visited the curious collection of Indian

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

portraits, landscapes, costumes, and implements of peace and war, painted and collected by Mr. Catlin, and now exhibited by him at the Egyptian Hall Piccadilly, without being struck by four paintings, representing the singular ceremonies in use among the Mandans, (a tribe now extinct,) and continued for four days and four nights in succession, in commemoration of the subsiding of the flood.

This singular people possessed in the centre of their village, for they were an agricultural, not a wandering tribe, a wooden erection, which they called their "Big Canoe," and which they verily believed to be the remains of the vessel in which the progenitors of the Indians were preserved, when all the earth was overwhelmed by the waters. They held their feast at the time when the willow boughs first burst into blossom; for they preserved the tradition of the fact mentioned in Holy Writ, that a dove first gave intimation to the inhabitants of the Ark that the waters were subsiding, but substituted the willow branch for the olive leaf.

The chief ceremony, however, was no simple meed of praise and thanksgiving--no modest humble prayer, in the trust that the voice of the lowly heart would not be disregarded. Covered with a grim mask formed from the shaggy hide of the buffalo, the people by turns performed a grotesque dance around the "Big Canoe," to the sound of drums and the cries of their "Medicine-man." He is one among them, generally an ancient, who, either by superior skill in the art of healing, the practice of successful juggling, by which the ignorant may at all times be easily deceived, or perchance by the force of a reputation as a prophet, derived from the fulfilment of a dream, no uncommon or unaccountable occurrence-is looked upon by the people as one who holds a mysterious communication not only with the good but the evil spirit; and dealing with the latter, is with them, as with all men even far advanced towards civilization, but not shielded by the armour of a lively faith, deemed a more sure road to immediate success, than a reliance upon their God.

Dressed in their hideous buffalo masks, and bearing bunches of green willows on their backs, the men, taking it by turns, eight at a time, dance round the "Big Canoe,” against which the “Medicine-man,” with his "medicine-pipe" in his hand, leans, and cries aloud to the Great Spirit. This dance and crying, which are not altogether unlike the leaping and crying of the priests of Baal, are intended as a propitiation of the Great Spirit, to induce him to send them plenty of buffalo in the hunting season; and should that fail, the dance, without the other ceremonies peculiar to the celebration of the subsidence of the flood, is repeated with the most horrible and inhuman gestures and cries.

In the four days' ceremonial the buffalo dance is repeated several times each day, and during its

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performance a sort of pantomimic accompaniment is enacted. A figure horribly painted with black, armed with a lance, the representative of the evil spirit, enters the village, and endeavours to interrupt the ceremony. The women cry for assistance; the warriors affect fear; but upon the interposition of the "Medicine-man" he is deprived of his lance, which is broken by the women, and he is driven away in disgrace.

But the buffalo dance is the least, although the most frequently-occurring ceremonial of these four days, and seems mainly intended to give all a part in a scene in which a few only are the chief actors. The young men of the tribe were expected, before they went on the war path or claimed a seat in the council, to give a proof of their constancy and fortitude; and their ordeal seems to have been regarded as a propitiatory sacrifice pleasing to the Great Spirit. Four days and four nights the candidates for torture, and glory fasted in the great "Medicine lodge," the "Medicine-man" lying in the midst, crying to the Great Spirit at all times when he was not summoned forth to assist at the buffalo dance. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, the work of torture commenced. Stout wooden splints were passed through the flesh of the shoulders or the pectoral muscles, and cords being attached to the splints, the already exhausted sufferer was suspended to the roof of the lodge. Other splints were passed through the arms and legs, to which buffalo sculls were attached. The devotee was then turned round with a pole until he fainted, and another took his place. As soon as the swoon passed away the sufferer dragged himself to the entrance of the lodge, and there sacrificed the little finger of his right hand to the Great Spirit.

But all this was only preliminary to the final ceremony. After all had been tortured in the lodge, they were led out, with the buffalo skulls still hanging to them. Around the "Big Canoe" a circle of young men, holding a wreath of willow boughs between them, danced violently, yelling with all their might.

The men who had been tortured were then brought forward-two fresh and powerful young men laid hold on each, by leather straps tied around the wrist, and ran with them outside the circle of the dancers till they fainted, and then still dragged them forward, until the weights were all disengaged from them by tearing the splints out of their flesh; they then dropped them, and left them apparently dead, "until the Great Spirit gave them strength to rise and walk to their lodges."

Such practices, when the exhibition of the power of endurance considered needful to the hardy warrior was made a portion of the ceremonial attending a national petition to the Almighty, were doubtless regarded in a double light,-like the scourging of the young Lacedemonians at the shrine of Diana,-as at once a trial of fortitude and

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