on important
occasions extremely sublime. Even in common conversation they speak in
figures, of which I have this moment an instance. A savage woman was
wounded lately in defending an English family from the drunken rage of
one of her nation. I asked her after her wound; "It is well," said she;
"my sisters at Quebec (meaning the English ladies) have been kind to
me; and piastres, you know, are very healing."

They have no idea of letters, no alphabet, nor is their language
reducible to rules: 'tis by painting they preserve the memory of the
only events which interest them, or that they think worth recording,
the conquests gained over their enemies in war.

When I speak of their paintings, I should not omit that, though
extremely rude, they have a strong resemblance to the Chinese, a
circumstance which struck me the more, as it is not the stile of
nature. Their dances also, the most lively pantomimes I ever saw,
and especially the dance of peace, exhibit variety of attitudes
resembling the figures on Chinese fans; nor have their features and
complexion less likeness to the pictures we see of the Tartars, as
their wandering manner of life, before they became christians, was
the same.

If I thought it necessary to suppose they were not natives of the
country, and that America was peopled later than the other quarters of
the world, I should imagine them the descendants of Tartars; as nothing
can be more easy than their passage from Asia, from which America is
probably not divided; or, if it is, by a very narrow channel. But I
leave this to those who are better informed, being a subject on which I
honestly confess my ignorance.

I have already observed, that they retain most of their antient
superstitions. I should particularize their belief in dreams, of which
folly even repeated disappointments cannot cure them: they have also an
unlimited faith in their _powawers_, or conjurers, of whom there
is one in every Indian village, who is at once physician, orator, and
divine, and who is consulted as an oracle on every occasion. As I
happened to smile at the recital a savage was making of a prophetic
dream, from which he assured us of the death of an English officer whom
I knew to be alive, "You Europeans," said he, "are the most
unreasonable people in the world; you laugh at our belief in dreams,
and yet expect us to believe things a thousand times more incredible."

Their general character is difficult to describe; made