of the Great Spirit: He
gave the lands which we possess to our fathers; if it be his will, our
bones shall whiten upon them, but we will never quit them." An old
Oneida chief, who was blind from years, observed to Heckewelder, "I am
an aged hemlock; the winds of one hundred years have whistled through my
branches; I am dead at the top. Why I yet live, the great, good Spirit
only knows." This venerable father of the forest lived long enough to be
converted to Christianity.--_Quarterly Review._]

[Footnote 253: A Huron woman under the instruction of a missionary, who
detailed to her the perfections of God, exclaimed, in a species of
ecstasy, "I understand, I understand; and I always felt convinced that
our Areskoui was exactly such a one as the God you have described to
me."--Lafitau, tom. i., p. 127. The Great Spirit was named Areskoui
among the Huron, Agriskone among the Iroquois, Manitou among the
Algonquins.]

[Footnote 254: See Appendix, No. LII. (see Vol II)]

[Footnote 255: Every spring the Arkansas go in a body to some retired
place, and there turn up a large space of land, which they do with the
drums beating all the while. After this they call it the _Desart_, or
the Field of the Spirit, and thither they go when they are in their
enthusiastic fits, and there wait for inspiration from their pretended
deity. In the mean while, as they do this every year, it proves of no
small advantage to them, for by this means they turn up all their land
by degrees, and it becomes abundantly more fruitful.--Tonti.]

[Footnote 256: Lafitau asserts that the first beast killed by a young
hunter was always offered in sacrifice.--Vol. i., p. 515. See Catlin's
description of the sacrifices and ceremonies practiced when the first
fruits of corn are ripe.--Catlin, vol. i., p. 189.]

[Footnote 257: Peter Martyr speaks of the general opinion among the
early discoverers that the Indians believed in a species of immortality.
"They confess the soul to be immortal; having put off the bodily
clothing, they imagine it goeth forth to the woods and the mountains,
and that it liveth there perpetually in caves; nor do they exempt it
from eating or drinking, but that it should be fed there. The answering
voices heard from caves and hollows, which the Latines call echoes, they
suppose to be the souls of the departed wandering through those
places."--Peter Martyr, Decad. VIII., cap. ix., M. Lock's translation,
1612.]

[Footnote 258: "Une jeune