h it be their canoe, as
polluted, if it be sprinkled with the water of animals. And it is a
remarkable fact, that the laws of separation and uncleanness, being
forty days for a male child and eighty for a female, observed by these
Indians, exactly correspond with the Levitical law imposed upon the
Jews in the birth of their children.

They are truly barbarous, like the Indians in general, towards their
captive enemies. The following circumstance, as related to me by an
Indian woman, whom I married to one of the principal settlers, and who
was a near relation of one of the women who was tomahawked by a war
party of Sioux Indians, some time ago, is calculated to fill the mind
with horror. They fell upon four lodges belonging to the Saulteaux, who
had encamped near _Fond du Lac_, Lake Superior, and which contained the
wives and children of about twelve men, who were at that time absent a
hunting; and immediately killed and scalped the whole party, except one
woman and two or three of the children. With the most wanton and savage
cruelty, they proceeded to put one of these little ones to death, by
first turning him for a short time close before a fire, when they cut
off one of his arms, and told him to run; and afterwards cruelly
tortured him, with the other children, till he died.

It is almost incredible the torture to which they will sometimes put
their prisoners; and the adult captives will endure it without a tear
or a groan. In spite of all their sufferings, which the love of cruelty
and revenge can invent and inflict upon them, they continue to chaunt
their death song with a firm voice; considering that to die like a man,
courting pain rather than flinching from it, is the noblest triumph of
the warrior. In going to war, some time ago, a Sioux chief cut a piece
of flesh from his thigh, and holding it up with a view to animate and
encourage the party who were to accompany him to the ferocious
conflict, told them to see how little he regarded pain, and that,
despising torture and the scalping knife and tomahawk of their enemies,
they should rush upon them, and pursue them till they were
exterminated; and thereby console the spirits of the dead whom they had
slain.

It does not appear that cannibalism is practised by any of the North
American Indians; on the contrary, the eating of human flesh is held in
great abhorrence by them: and when they are driven to eat it, through
dire necessity, they are generally shunned b