and he had fallen on a large wood fire, and thus got dreadfully burned.

In the course of conversation with the chiefs of this tribe, they expressed great admiration of my wife's dress and ornaments, and were especially enamoured with the feathers which she happened then to wear in her bonnet. With my younger son, Leicester, they were even still more pleased, and were quite astonished that one so young should come so far away from home, over the "great sea," of which they seem to have a most terrible idea. They asked us whether, in the course of our journey, we intended to come so far west as their prairies and forests; and we answered that this was what we intended, and hoped to accomplish; but that our stay would be short, as we should desire only to see their country, and then return home, without settling in it. This was no sooner interpreted to them than several Indian voices exclaimed, as we afterward learned, "Does he say so? does he say so? He is welcome! he is welcome!" And, when this assurance was repeated, the principal chief of the tribe advanced to me, and grasping my hand firmly, he said, with a grave countenance, looking at me, but addressing himself to the interpreter, "Tell this white man that if he comes to see us, and goes away again, leaving us in possession of our lands undisturbed, we will bless his name forever. The white men come, they look at our lands, they take them from us, they drive us far off; we become settled, they disturb us, and drive us farther off again, because they want our lands for themselves, and, therefore, we like not their footsteps; but if he will come, and share our feasts, and smoke our calumet, and then return to his own home, we will give him a welcome such as white men do not often receive." I repeated my assurance, and even ventured to add my deep regret that all white men could not be prevailed upon to leave them in the quiet possession of the huntinggrounds and graves of their fathers; and the sentiment was one that evidently touched all their sympathies.

It would be a long and a melancholy narrative to relate the half of what it fell to my lot to hear, without leaving New-York, of the ill-treatment of the Indians by the whites, who teach them all our vices, but especially drunkenness, for the purpose of defrauding them, while thus intoxicated, in the various bargains of traffic and sale in which they are engaged. In addition to this, still more deliberate and coldblooded injuries are practised by whites of comparative opulence upon their unsuspecting females. The following is

HEARTLESSNESS OF A TRADER.

83

abridged from a very interesting but little-known work, entitled "Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains," written by a young gentleman of New-York, who presented me with a copy, and who states that he had the facts from the mouth of an old Indian in the Far West, who ap peared to be sinking under the weight of his years.

In 1814, an American trader of considerable influence, thinking he should strengthen his mercantile connexions among the Missouri Indians, succeeded in prevailing on one of the principal families of the Omawha tribe of Indians to permit him to marry one of their daughters, who was remarkably beautiful. The marriage being consummated, she soon bore him a son and a daughter, one of which she permitted the father to take with him to the country of the whites, and the other she retained with her. On his return, however, to the Indian territory, it was found that he had married a white wife in his absence, and that he now demanded the surrender of the second child, and the repudiation of its mother. To this, of course, she refused her assent. The trader then offered her a considerable present if she would go away and leave her child; upon which she exclaimed, "Is my child a dog, that I should sell him for merchandise? You cannot drive me away; you may beat me, it is true, and otherwise abuse me, but I will still remain with you. When you married me, you promised to use me kindly as long as I should be faithful to you. That I have been so, no one can deny. Ours was not a marriage contracted for a season; no, it was to terminate only with our lives. I was then a young girl, and might have been united to an Omawha chief; but I am now an old woman, having had two children, and what Omawha will regard me? Is not my right paramount to that of your other wife? She had not heard of me before you possessed her. It is true, her skin is whiter than mine, but her heart cannot be more pure towards you, nor her fidelity more rigid." Happily, the infant was secured to its devoted mother, but the heartless wretch of a trader abandoned her forever. Who can wonder, therefore, when the Indians are continually receiv ing injuries, and rarely, if ever, blessings from the hand of the white man, that they should not "like his footsteps?"

Soon after the visit of the Sauks and Foxes, and Sioux and Ioways, another party of Indians arrived at New-York, consisting of Pawnees, Omawhas, and Otoes. We saw the whole of these also, but there was nothing peculiar in them to deserve a detailed description. The following account of

their visit, with their names, is given in the New-York Express of November, 30 1837:

"The delegation from several tribes of Indians, under charge of Major Dougherty, left this city yesterday for Washington, where they are to hold a council with the secretary of war.

"They appeared to be much pleased with their visit to the city, having spent a week, and visited the Navy-yard, theatres, museums, &c. On Saturday they visited Mr. Catlin at his exhibition-room in Broadway, who has spent several years among them and other tribes of Indians. After viewing his splendid collection of Indian portraits, landscapes, and curiosities, he took them into another room, where he had several of their own portraits, which they discovered at once, and appeared to be much delighted at the sight of their own faces on the canvass.

"They were received by the mayor and Common Council at the City Hall on Saturday, and a great variety of presents were made them, consisting of red and blue broadcloths, knives, glasses, beads, &c.

"During their visit at the Navy-yard, one of them applied the match to a loaded cannon on board the Hudson: the effect astonished them : one of them said he thought the Great Spirit could only produce thunder, but he had now seen it among the white men; that, for the future, the Indian would avoid collision with his white brethren, as he was convinced they were too powerful for them.

"The following are the names of the tribes and chiefs:

REPLY OF AN INDIAN chief.

85

MISSOURI TRIBE.

During the stay of these Indians in New-York, they were as much objects of curiosity to the inhabitants as they would have been to the residents of London. Wherever they went, whether to the theatre or the museum, the Battery or the steamboat, crowds of persons of both sexes, who had never before, perhaps, seen so many Indians, and of such distant tribes, in their lives, followed them in the streets, and their hotels were crowded at all hours of the day. Such are the revolutions of things, that the aboriginal Indians, who less than two centuries ago were the sole occupants of the very island on which New-York is built, are now strangers in the land of their fathers.

The reply made by one of the Indian chiefs to General Knox, who was entertaining in the city of New-York a deputation from the tribes, is full of melancholy truth; and perhaps it interested me the more, from the resemblance of the fate of the Indians of the West to those of the East, as both have been dispossessed of their lands and dominions by their white conquerors; for the language used by the Indian of America is precisely that which might, with equal propriety, be used by a native Indian of Malabar, of Coromandel, or of Bengal.

"What makes you so melancholy?" said General Knox to the Indian chief, who was observed to be very thoughtful amid the gayeties of the entertainment prepared for himself and his brethren of the forest. "I will tell you, brother," was the chief's reply: "I have been looking at your beautiful city, your great waters, full of ships, your fine country, and I see how prosperous you all are. But, then, I could not help thinking that this fine country was once ours. Our ancestors lived here. They enjoyed it as their own, in peace. It was the gift of the Great Spirit to them and to their children. At last white men came in a great canoe; they only asked to let them tie it to a tree, lest the water should carry it away. We consented. They then said some of their people were sick, and they asked permission to land them, and put them under the shade of the trees. The ice came, and they could not go away. They then begged a piece of land to build wigwams for the winter. We granted it to them. They then asked corn to keep them from starving. We furnished it out of our own scanty supply. They promised to go away when the ice melted.

When this happened, instead of going away as they had promised, they pointed to the big guns round the wigwams, and they said, 'We shall stay here.' Afterward came more. They brought intoxicating drinks, of which the Indians became fond. They persuaded them to sell them our land, and, finally, have driven us back, from time to time, to the wilderness, far from the water, the fish, and the oysters. They have scared away our game. My people are wasting away. We live in the want of all things, while you are enjoying abundance in our fine and beautiful country. This makes me sorry, brother, and I cannot help it."

The following anecdote was related to me at New-York by an elderly gentleman, nearly seventy, who had passed many years with the Indians, both in the early and middle periods of his life. He was at one time deputed to treat with the tribe of Oneidas, west of Lake Erie, for the purchase of a large tract of their land, and the payment of 100,000 dollars was agreed to be given to them for it. The Indians, who have no conception of numbers beyond a hundred, could not be made to comprehend how much this sum was, until a number of kegs or barrels were procured and ranged along in line, and the number of these kegs which 100,000 dollars would fill gave them some idea of their multiplicity; while a conception of their weight was conveyed by describing how many horses it would require to carry them if they were loaded on their backs. It was then thought that this great sum was too harge to be divided among the Indians at one time, as it would probably soon be all spent, and they would then be destitute. To provide against this, it was suggested that the principal sum should be deposited in the United States' Bank; that the government for the time being should be made perpetual trustees for its custody; and that the interest of this sum, at seven per cent., or 7000 dollars, should be divided among them every year forever.

This proposition was much approved of; but the Indians could not be made to comprehend what a bank was, or how 7000 dollars could be paid to them every year from this bank, and the 100,000 still remain undiminished. Among the various suppositions in which they indulged on this subject, one was, that the bank was a place where, by some extraordinary process, silver increased in bulk and size by one seventh in every year, and that the 7000 dollars was to be made out of the yearly increase of the metal by growth, when the surplus would be cut off, and the remainder al