hand a string of wampum,
makes a speech, in which the causes of war, and the injuries and insults
which justify it, are fully and artfully set forth. When he has
finished, he lays the collar on the ground, and he who takes it up, by
so doing, declares himself embarked in the same expedition.

(2) _Eat up the Nation_.--p. 294.

This is a frequent figure of the Indian orator, when endeavouring to
inflame the passions of his hearers. It signifies that a war is to be
waged against the nation respecting whom the "talk" is held, in the most
outrageous and destructive manner. When they wish to engage in their
quarrel an ally who is not present, they send a belt of wampum, with an
invitation to him to drink the "blood" or "the broth of the flesh of
their enemies." It is not to be inferred from this, that the North
American Indians are _Anthropophagi_. It is undoubtedly an allegorical
manner of speaking, with frequent examples of which the Scriptures
furnish us, _e.g._ Psalms xxvii. 2.

(3) _The stormy Lake of Michabou._--p. 294.

The Indians believe that Michabou, the God of the Waters, formed Lake
Superior to serve as a nursery for beavers. The rocks at the _Sault de
Saint Marie_, or Falls of St. Mary, according to the tradition of the
Indians, are the remains of a causeway made by the God in order to dam
up the waters of the rivers, which supply this great lake. At the time
he did this, he lived, they add, at Michillimackinac, _i.e._ a great
place for turtles, pronounced Mak-i-naw. He it was who taught the
ancestors of the Indians to fish, and invented nets, of which he took
the idea from the spider's web. Very many of the northern tribes
recognise this same divinity, but the Hurons alone assign Lake Superior
as the place of his residence.

(4) _House of Death._--p. 302.

The funeral customs of the Indians are very various, and all are
sufficiently curious to merit a place in this note. I have only space
for a few. The first extract relates rather to the place of deposit for
the dead, than to the dead themselves. It describes the common cemetery
of the tribes living west of the Rocky Mountains.

"Among the Pishquitpaws, who live beyond the Rocky Mountains, the place
in which the dead are deposited is a building about sixty feet long, and
twelve feet wide, and is formed by placing in the ground poles or forks
six feet high, across which a long pole is extended the whole length of
the structure. Against this ridge-pole