CHAPTER VIII. THE INDIANS : THEIR IMPLEMENTS, UTENSILS, FORTIFICATIONS, MOUNDS, AND THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. BEFORE the arrival of the Europeans the use of iron was but little known to the North American Indians. Marquette, in speaking of the Illinois, states that they were entirely ignorant of the use of iron tools, their weapons being made of stone. This was true of all the Indians who made their homes north of the Ohio, but south of that stream metal tools were occasionally met with. When Hernando De Soto, in 1539-43, was traversing the southern part of that territory, now known as the United States, in his vain search for gold, some of his followers found the natives on the Savanna River using hatchets made of copper. It is evident that these hatchets were of a native manufacture, for they were " said to have a mixture of gold." The southern Indians "had long bows, and their arrows were made of certain canes like reeds, very heavy, and so strong that a sharp cane passeth through a target. Some they arm in the point with the sharp bone of a fish, like a chisel, and in others they fasten certain stones like points of diamonds." These bones or " scale of the armed fish " were neatly fastened to the head of the arrows with splits of cane and fish glue. The northern Indians used arrows with stone points. Father Basics thus describes them : " Arrows are the principal arms which they use in war and in the chase. They are pointed at the end with a stone, cut and sharpened in the shape of a serpent's tongue; and, if no knife is at hand, they use them also to skin the animals they have killed." " The bowstrings were prepared from the entrails of a stag, or of a stag's skin, which they know how to dress as well as any man in France, and with as many different colors. They head their arrows with the teeth of fishes and stone, which they work very finely and handsomely." Most of the hatchets and knives of the northern Indians were likewise made of sharpened stones, " which they fastened in a cleft piece of wood with leathern thongs." Their tomahawks were constructed from stone, the horn of a stag, or ' from wood in the shape of a cut- 82 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. lass, and terminated by a large ball." The tomahawk was held in one hand and a knife in the other. As soon as they dealt a blow on the head of an enemy, they immediately cut it round with the knife, and took off the scalp with extraordinary rapidity. Du Pratz thus describes their method of felling trees with stone implements and with fire : " Cutting instruments are almost continually wanted ; but as they had no iron, which of all metals is the most useful in human society, they were obliged, with infinite pains, to form hatchets out of large flints, by sharpening their thin edge, and making a hole through them for receiving the handle. To cut down trees with these axes would have been almost an impracticable work ; they were, therefore, obliged to light fires round the roots of them, and to cut away the charcoal as the fire eat into the tree. " Charlevoix makes a similar statement : " These people, before we provided them with hatchets and other instruments, were very much at a loss in felling their trees, and making them fit for such uses as they intended them for. They burned them near the root, and in order to split and cut them into proper lengths they made use of hatchets made of flint, which never broke, but which required a prodigious time to sharpen. In order to fix them in a shaft, they cut off the top of a young tree, making a slit in it, as if they were going to draft it, into which slit they inserted the head of the axe. The tree, growing together again in length of time, held the head of the hatchet so firm that it was impossible for it to get loose ; they then cut the tree at the length they deemed sufficient for the handle." When they were about to make wooden dishes, porringers or spoons, they cut the blocks of wood to the required shape with stone hatchets, hollowed them out with coals of fire, and polished them with beaver teeth. Early settlers in the neighborhood of Thorntown, Indiana, noticed that the Indians made their hominy-blocks in a similar manner. Round stones were heated and placed upon the blocks which were to be excavated. The charred wood was dug out with knives, and then the. surface was polished with stone implements. These round stones were the common property of the tribe, and were used by individual families as occasion required. " They dug their ground with an instrument of wood, which was fashioned like a broad mattock, wherewith they dig their vines as in France ; they put two grains of maize together." For boiling their victuals they made use of earthen kettles. The kettle was held up by two crotches and a stick of wood laid across. THEIR IMPLEMENTS AND POTTERY - 83 The pot ladle, called by them mikoine, laid at the side. "In the north they often made use of wooden kettles, and made the water boil by throwing into it red hot pebbles. Our iron pots are esteemed by them as much more commodious than their own." That the North American Indians not only used, but actually manufactured, pottery for various culinary and religious purposes admits of no argument. Hennepin remarks ; " Before the arrival of the Europeans in North America both the northern and southern savages made use of, and do to this day use, earthen pots, especially such as have no commerce with the Europeans, from whom they may procure kettles and other movables." M. Pouchot, who was acquainted with the manners and customs of the Canadian Indians, states " that they formerly had usages and utensils to which they are now scarcely accustomed. They made pottery and drew fire from wood." In 1700, Father Gravier, in speaking of the Yazoos, says : "You see there in their cabins neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor guns ; they carry all with them, and have no riches but earthen pots, quite well made, especially little glazed pitchers, as neat as you would see in France." The Illinois also occasionally used glazed pitchers. The manufacturing of these earthen vessels was done by the women. By the southern Indians the earthenware goods were used for religious as well as domestic purposes. Gravier noticed several in their temples, containing bones of departed warriors, ashes, etc. The American Indians, both northern and southern, had most of their villages fortified either by wooden palisades, or earthen breastworks and palisades combined. De Soto, on the 19th of June, 1541, entered the town of Pacaha, which was very great, walled; and beset with towers, and many loopholes were in the towers and wall. Charlevoix said : " The Indians are more skillful in erecting their fortifications than in building their houses. Here you see villages surrounded with good palisades and with redoubts; and they are very careful to lay in a proper provision of water and stones. These palisades are double, and even sometimes treble, and generally have battlements on the outer circumvallation. The piles, of which they are composed, are interwoven with branches of trees, without any void space between them. This sort of fortification was sufficient to sustain a long siege whilst the Indians were ignorant of the use of fire-arms. La Hontan thus describes these palisaded towns : " Their villages are fortified with double palisadoes of very hard wood, which are as 84 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. thick as one's thigh, and fifteen feet high, with little squares about the middle of courtines." These wooden fortifications were used to a comparatively late day. At the siege of Detroit, in 1712, the Foxes and Mascoutins resisted, in a wooden fort, for nineteen days, the attack of a much larger force of Frenchmen and Indians. In order to avoid the fire of the French, they dug holes four or five feet deep in the bottom of their fort. The western Indians, in their fortifications, made use of both earth and wood. An early American author remarks : " The remains of Indian fortifications seen throughout the western country, have given rise to strange conjectures, and have been supposed to appertain to a period extremely remote ; but it is a fact well known that in some of them the remains of palisadoes were found by the first settlers." When Major Long's party, in 1823, passed through Fort Wayne, they inquired of Metea, a celebrated Pottawatomie chief, well versed in the lore of his tribe, whether he had ever heard of any tradition accounting for the erection of those artificial mounds which are found scattered over the whole country. " Ile immediately replied that they had been constructed by the Indians as fortifications before the white man had come among them. He had always heard this origin ascribed to them, and knew three of those constructions which were supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines Rivers, a second on the Ohio, which, from his description, was supposed to he at the mouth of the Muskingum. He visited it, but could not describe the spot accurately, and a third, which he had also seen, he stated to be on the headwaters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter place is about forty miles northwest of Fort Wayne." One of the Miami chiefs, whom the traders named Le Gros, told Barron that "he had heard that his father had fought with his tribe in one of the forts at Piqua, Ohio; that the fort had been erected by the Indians against the French, and that his father had been killed during one of the assaults made upon it." While at Chicago, and "with a view to collect as much information as possible on the subject of Indian antiquities, we inquired of Robinson whether any traditions on this subject were current among the Indians. He observed that these ancient fortifications were a frequent subject of conversation, and especially those in the nature of excavations made in the ground. He had heard of one made by the Kickapoos and Fox Indians on the Sangamo River, a stream running INDIAN MOUNDS - 85 into the Illinois. This fortification is distinguished by the name of Etnataek. It is known to have served as an intrenchment to the Kickapoos and Foxes, who were met there and defeated by the Pottawatomies, the Ottawas and Chippeways. No date was assigned to this transaction. We understand that the Etnataek was near the Kickapoo village on the Sangamo." Near the dividing line between sections 4 and 5, township 31 north, of range 11 east, in Kankakee county, Illinois, on the prairie about a mile above the mouth of Rock Creek, are some ancient mounds. " One is very large, being about one hundred feet base in diameter and about twenty feet high, in a conic form, and is said to contain the remains of two hundred Indians who were killed in the celebrated battle between the Illinois and Chippeways, Delawares and Shawnees ; and about two chains to the northeast, and the same distance to 'the northwest, are two other small mounds, which are said to contain the remains of the chiefs of the two parties. Uncorroborated Indian traditions are not entitled to any high degree of credibility, and these quoted are introduced to refute the often repeated assertion that the Indians had no tradition concerning the origin of the mounds scattered through the western states, or that they supposed them to have been erected by a race who occupied the continent anterior to themselves. These mounds were seldom or never used for religious purposes by the Algonquins or Iroquois, but Penicault states that when lie visited the Natchez Indians, in 1704, ".the houses of the Suns are built on mounds, and are distinguished from each other by their size. The mound upon which the house of the Great Chief, or Sun, is built is larger than the rest, and its sides are steeper. The temple in the village of the Great Sun is about thirty feet high and forty-eight in circumference, with the walls eight feet thick and covered with a matting of canoes, in which they keep up a perpetual fire." De Soto found the houses of the chiefs built on mounds of different heights, according to their rank, and their villages fortified with palisades, or walls of earth, with gateways to go in and out. When Gravier, in 1700, visited the Yazoos, he noticed that their temple was raised on a mound of earth. He also, in speaking of the Ohio, states that " it is called by the Illinois and Oumiamis the river of the Akansea, because the Akansea formerly dwelt on it. The Akansea or Arkansas Indians possessed many traits and customs in common with the Natchez, having temples, pottery, etc. A still more important fact is noticed by Du Pratz, who was intimately 86 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. acquainted with the Great Sun. He says : " The temple is about thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mound about eight feet high, by the side of a small river. The mound slopes insensibly from the main front, which is northward, but on the other side it is somewhat steeper." According to their own traditions, the Natchez " were at one time the most powerful nation in all North America, and were looked upon by the other nations as their superiors, and were, on that account, respected by them. Their territory extended from the River Iberville, in Louisiana, to the Wabash." They had over five hundred suns, and, consequently, nearly that many villages. Their decline and retreat to the south was owing not to the superiority in arms of the less civilized surrounding tribes, but was due to the pride of their own chiefs, who, to lend an imposing magnificence to their funeral rites, adopted the impolitic custom of having hundreds of their followers strangled at their pyre. Many of the mounds, scattered up and down the valleys of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi, while being the only, may be the time-defying monuments of the departed power and grandeur of these two tribes. The Indian manner of making a fire is thus related by Hennepin : " Their way of making a fire, which is new and unknown to us, is thus : They take a triangular piece of cedar wood of a foot and a half in length, wherein they bore some holes half through ; then they take a switch, or another small piece of hard wood, and with both their hands rub the strongest upon the weakest in the hole, which is made in the cedar, and while they are thus rubbing they let fall a sort of dust or powder, which turns into fire. This white dust they roll up in a pellet of herbs, dried in autumn, and rubbing them all together, and then blowing upon the dust that is in the pellets, the fire kindles in a moment." The food of the Indians consisted of all the varieties of game, fishes and wild fruits in the vicinity; and they cultivated Indian corn, melons and squashes. From corn they made a preparation called sagamite. They pulverized the corn, mixed it with water, and added a small proportion of ground gourds or beans. The clothing of the northern Indians consisted only of the skins of wild animals, roughly prepared for that purpose. Their southern brethren were far in advance of them in this respect. "Many of the women wore cloaks of the bark of the mulberry tree, or of the feathers of swans, turkeys or Indian ducks. The bark they take from young mulberry shoots that rise from the roots of trees that have THEIR CANOES - 87 been cut down. After it is dried in the sun they beat it to make all the woody parts fall off, and they give the threads that remain a second beating, after which they bleach them by exposing them to the dew. When they are well whitened they spin them about the coarseness of pack-thread, and weave them in the following manner : They plant two stakes in the ground about a yard and a half asunder, and having stretched a cord from the one to the other, they fasten their threads of bark double to this cord, and then interweave them in a curious manner into a cloak of about a yard square, with a wrought border round the edges." The Indians had three varieties of canoes, elm-bark, birch-bark and pirogues. "Canoes of elm-bark were not used for long voyages, as they were very frail. When the Indians wish to make a canoe of elm-bark they select the trunk of a tree which is very smooth, at the time when the sap remains. They cut it around, above and below, about ten, twelve or fifteen feet apart, according to the number of people which it is to carry. After having taken off the whole in one piece, they shave off the roughest of the bark, which they make the inside of the canoe. They make end ties of the thickness of a finger, and of sufficient length for the canoe, using young oak or any other flexible and strong wood, and fasten the two larger folds of the bark between these strips, spreading them apart with wooden bows, which are fastened in about two feet apart. They sew up the two ends of the bark with strips drawn from the inner bark of the elm, giving attention to raise up a little the two extremities, which they call pinces, making a swell in the middle and a curve on the sides, to resist the wind. If there are any chinks, they sew them together with thongs and cover them with chewing-gum, which they crowd by heating it with a coal of fire. The bark is fastened to the wooden bows by wooden thongs. They add a mast, made of a piece of wood and cross-piece to serve as a yard, and their blankets serve them as sails! These canoes will carry from three to nine persons and all their equipage. They sit upon their heels, without moving, as do also their children; when they are in, from fear of losing their balance, when the whole machine would upset. But this very seldom happened, unless struck by a flaw of wind. They use these vessels particularly in their war parties. " The canoes made of birch bark were much more solid and more artistically constructed. The frames of these canoes are made of strips of cedar wood, which is very flexible, and which they render as thin as a side of a sword-scabbard, and three or four inches wide. 88 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. They all touch one another, and come up to a point between the two end strips. This frame is covered with the bark of the birch tree, sewed together like skins, secured between the end strips and tied along the ribs with the inner .bark of the roots of the cedar, as we twist willows around the hoops of a cask. All these seams are covered with gum, as is done with canoes of elm bark. They then put in cross-bars to hold it and to serve as seats, and a long pole, which they lay on from fore to aft in rough weather to prevent it from being broken by the shocks occasioned by pitching. They have with them three, six, twelve and even twenty-four places, which are designated as so many seats. The French are almost the only people who use these canoes for their long voyages. They will carry as much as three thousand pounds." These were vessels in which the fur trade of the entire northwest has been carried on for so many years. They were very light, four men being able to carry the largest of them over portages. At night they were unloaded, drawn upon the shore, turned over, and served the savages or traders as huts. They could endure gales of wind that would play havoc with vessels of European manufacture. In calm water the canoe men, in a sitting posture, used paddles; in stemming currents, rising from their seats, they substituted poles for paddles, and in shooting rapids, they rested on their knees. Pirogues were the trunks of trees hollowed out and pointed at the extremities. A fire was started on the trunk, out of which the pirogue was to be constructed. The fire was kept within the desired limits by the dripping of water upon the edges of the trunk. As a part became charred, it was dug out with stone hatchets, and the fire rekindled. This kind of canoes was especially adapted for the navigation of the Mississippi and Missouri ; the current of these streams carrying down trees, which formed snags, rendered their navigation by bark canoes exceedingly hazardous. It was probably owing to this reason, as well as because there were no birch trees in their country, that the Illinois and Miamis were not, as the Jesuits remarked, "canoe nations;" they used the awkward, heavy pirogue instead. Each nation was divided into villages. The Indian village, when unfortified, had its cabins scattered along the banks of a river or the shores of a lake, and often extended for three or four miles. Each cabin held the head of the family, the children, grandchildren, and often the brothers and sisters, so that a single cabin not unfrequently contained as many as sixty persons. Some of their cabins were in WIGWAMS - 89 the form of elongated squares, of which the sides were not more than five or six feet high. They were made of bark, and the roof was prepared from the same material, having an opening in the top for the passage of smoke. At both ends of the cabin there were entrances. The fire was built under the hole in the roof, and there were as many fires as there were families. The beds were upon planks on the floor of the cabin, or upon simple hides, which they called appichimon, placed along the partitions. They slept upon these skins, wrapped in their blankets, which, during the day, served them for clothing. Each one had his particular place. The man and wife crouched together, her back being against his body, their blankets passed around their heads and feet, so that they looked like a plate of ducks. These bark cabins were used by the Iroquois, and indeed, by many Indian tribes who lived exclusively in the forests. The prairie Indians, who were unable to procure bark, generally made mats out of platted reeds or flags, and placed these mats around three or four poles tied together at the ends. They were, in form, round, and terminated in a cone. These mats were sewed together with so much skill that, when new, the rain could not penetrate them. This variety of cabins possessed the great advantage that, when they moved their place of residence, the mats of reeds were rolled up and carried along by the squaws. " The nastiness of these cabins alone, and that infection which was a necessary consequence of it, would have been to any one but an Indian a severe punishment. Having no windows, they were full of smoke, and in cold weather they were crowded with dogs. The Indians never changed their garments until they fell off by their very rottenness. Being never washed, they were fairly alive with vermin. In summer the savages bathed every day, but immediately afterward rubbed themselves with oil and grease of a very rank smell. " In winter they remained unwashed, and it was impossible to enter their cabins without being poisoned with the stench." All their food was very ill-seasoned and insipid, " and there prvailed in all their repasts an uncleanliness which passed all conception. There were very few animals which did not feed cleaner." They never washed their wooden or bark dishes, nor their porringers and spoons. In this connection William Biggs states : " They plucked off a few of the largest feathers, then threw the duck--feathers, entrails and all—into the soup kettle, and cooked it in that manner." 90 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. The Indians were cannibals, though human flesh was only eaten at war feasts. It was often the case that after a prisoner had been tortured his body was thrown into "the war-kettle," and his remains greedily devoured. This fact is uniformly asserted by the early French writers. Members of Major Long's party made especial inquiries at Fort Wayne concerning this subject, and were entirely convinced. They met persons who had attended the feasts, and saw Indians who acknowledged that they had participated in them. Joseph Barron saw the Pottawatomies with hands and limbs, both of white men and Cherokees, which they were about to devour. Among some tribes cannibalism was universal, but it appears that among the Pottawatomies and Miamis it was restricted to a fraternity whose privilege and duty it was on all occasions to eat out of the enemy's flesh ;—at least one individual must be eaten. The flesh was sometimes dried and taken to the villages. The Indians had some peculiar funeral customs. Joutel thus records some of his observations : " They pay a respect to their dead, as appears by their special care of burying them, and even of putting into lofty coffins the bodies of such as are considerable among them, as their chiefs and others, which is also practiced among the Accanceas, but they differ in this respect, that the Accanceas weep and make their complaints for some days, whereas the Shawnees and other people of the Illinois nation do just the contrary, for when any of them die they wrap them up in skins and then put them into coffins made of the bark of trees, then sing and dance about them for twenty-four hours. Those dancers take care to tie calabashes, or gourds, about their bodies, with some Indian corn in them, to rattle and make a noise, and some of them have a drum, made of a great earthen pot, on which they extend a wild goat's skin, and beat thereon with one stick, like our tabors. During that rejoicing they threw their presents on the coffin, as bracelets, pendants or pieces of earthenware. When the ceremony was over they buried the body, with a part of the presents, making choice of such as may be most proper for it. They also bury with it some store of Indian wheat, with a pot to boil it in, for fear the dead person should be hungry on his long journey, and they repeat the ceremony at the year's end. A good number of presents still remaining, they divide them into several lots and play at a game called the stick to give them to the winner." The Indian graves were made of a large size, and the whole of the inside lined with bark. On the bark was laid the corpse, accompanied INDIAN SUPERSTITIONS - 91 with axes, snowshoes, kettle, common shoes, and, if a woman, carrying-belts and paddles. This was covered with bark, and at about two feet nearer the surface, logs were laid across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by no means fall upon the corpse. If the deceased, before his death, had so expressed his wish, a tree was hollowed out and the corpse deposited within. After the body had become entirely decomposed, the bones were often collected and buried in the earth. Many of these wooden sepulchres were discovered by the early settlers in Iroquois county, Illinois. Doubtless they were the remains of the Pottawatomies, who at that time resided there. After a death they took care to visit every place near their cabins, striking incessantly with rods and raising the most hideous cries, in order to drive the souls to a distance, and to keep them from lurking about their cabins. The Indians believed that every animal contained a Manitou or God, and that these spirits could exert over them a beneficial or prejudicial influence. The rattlesnake was especially venerated by them. Henry relates an instance of this veneration. He saw a snake, and procured his gun, with the intention of dispatching it. The Indians begged him to desist, and, "with their pipes and tobacco pouches in their hands, approached the snake. They surrounded it, all addressing it by turns and calling it their grandfather, but yet kept at some distance. During this part of the ceremony, they filled their pipes, and each blew the smoke toward the snake, which, as it appeared to me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining coiled and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it stretched itself along the ground in visible good humor. The Indians followed it, and, still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeched it to take care of their families during their absence, and also to open the hearts of the English, that they might fill their (the Indians') canoes with rum. This reverence of the Indians for the rattlesnake will account for the vast number of these reptiles met with by early settlers in localities favorable for their increase and security. The clefts in the rocky cliffs below Niagara Falls were so infested with rattlesnakes that the Indians removed their village to a place of greater security. The Indians had several games, some of which have been already noticed. McCoy mentions a singular occurrence of this nature : "A Miami Indian had been stabbed with a knife, who lingered, and of whose recovery there was no doubt. On the 12th of May a party 92 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. resolved to decide by a game of moccasin whether the man should live or die. In this game the party seat themselves upon the earth opposite to each other, while one holds a moccasin on the ground with one hand, and holds in the other a small ball ; the ball he affects to conceal in the moccasin, and does either insert it or not, as he shall choose, and then leaves the opposite party to guess where the ball is. In order to deceive his antagonist, he incessantly utters a kind of a sing-song, which is repeated about thrice in a minute, and moving his hands in unison with the notes, brings one of them, at every repetition, to the mouth of the moccasin, as though he had that moment inserted the ball. One party played for the wounded man's recovery and the other for his death. Two games were played, in both of which the side for recovery was triumphant, and so they concluded the man would not die of his wounds." The Indians had a most excellent knowledge of the topography of their country, and they drew the most exact maps of the countries they were acquainted with. They set down the true north according to the polar star; the ports, harbors, rivers, creeks, and coasts of the lakes ; roads, mountains, woods, marshes and meadows. They counted the distances by journeys and half journeys, allowing to every journey five leagues. These maps were drawn upon birch bark. "Previous to General Brock's crossing over to Detroit, he asked Tecumseh what sort of a country he should have to pass through in case of his proceeding farther. Tecumseh took a roll of elm bark, and extending it on the ground, by means of four stones, drew forth his scalping knife, and, with the point, etched upon the bark a plan of the country, its hills, woods, rivers, morasses, a plan which, if not as neat, was fully as accurate as if it had been made by a professional map-maker. In marriage, they had no ceremony worth mentioning, the man and the woman agreeing that for so many bucks, beaver hides, or, in short, any valuables, she should be his wife. Of all the passions, the Indians were least influenced by love. Some authors claim that it had no existence, excepting, of course, mere lust, which is possessed by all animals. " By women, beauty was commonly no motive to marriage, the only inducement being the reward which she received. It was said that the women were purchased by the night, week, month or winter, so that they depended on fornication for a living; nor was it thought either a crime or shame, none being esteemed as prostitutes but such as were licentious without a reward." Polygamy was common, but was seldom practiced except by the chiefs. On the smallest offense husband and wife parted, she taking the MARRIAGE AND RELIGION - 93 domestic utensils and the children of her sex. Children formed the only bond of affection between the two sexes; and of them, to the credit of the, Indian be it said, they were very fond. They never chastised them, the only punishment being to dash, by the hand, water into the face of the refractory child. Joutel noticed this method of correction among the Illinois, and nearly a hundred years later Jones mentions the same custom as existing among the Shawnees. The Algonquin tribes, differing in this respect from the southern Indians, had no especial religion. They believed in good and bad spirits, and thought it was only necessary to appease the wicked spirits, for the good ones "were all right anyway." These bad spirits were thought to occupy the bodies of animals, fishes and reptiles, to dwell in high mountains, gloomy caverns, dangerous whirlpools, and all large bodies of water. This will account for the offerings of tobacco and other valuables which they made when passing such places. No ideas of morals or metaphysics ever entered the head of the Indians; they believed what was told them upon those subjects, without having more than a vague impression of their meaning. Some of the Canadian Indians, in all sincerity, compared the Holy Trinity to a piece of pork. There they found the lean meat, the fat and the rind, three distinct parts that form the same piece." Their ideas of heaven was a place full of sensual enjoyments, and free from physical pains. Indeed, it is doubtful if, before their mythology was changed by the partial adoption of some of the doctrines of Christianity, they had any idea of spiritual reward or punishment. Wampum, prior to and many years subsequent to the advent of the Europeans, was the circulating medium among the North American Indians. It is made out of a marine shell, or periwinkle, some of which are white, others violet, verging toward black. They are perforated in the direction of the greater diameter, and are worked into two forms, strings and belts. The strings consist of cylinders strung without any order, one after another, on to a thread. The belts are wide sashes, in which the white and purple beads are arranged in rows and tied by little leathern strings, making a very pretty tissue. Wampum belts are used in state affairs, and their length, width and color are in proportion to the importance of the affair being negotiated. They are wrought, sometimes, into figures of considerable beauty. These belts and strings of wampum are the universal agent with 94 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. the Indians, not only as money, jewelry or ornaments, but as annals and for registers to perpetuate treaties and compacts between individuals and nations. They are the inviolable and sacred pledges which guarantee messages, promises and treaties. As writing is not in use among them, they make a local memoir by means of these belts, each of which signifies a particular affair or a circumstance relating to it. The village chiefs are the custodians, and communicate the affairs they perpetuate to the young people, who thus learn the history, treaties and engagements of their nation. Belts are classified as message, road, peace or war belts. White signifies peace, as black does war. The color therefore at once indicates the intention of the person or tribe who sends or accepts a belt. So general was the importance of the belt, that the French and English, and the Americans, even down as late as the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, used it in treating with the Indians