eficial to them.

As before said, it is no object of this paper to defend or combat the
Indian notion of medicine. Such a system exists as a fact; and whoever
writes upon American Demonology will find many fruitful topics of
investigation in the daily life of the uncontaminated Indian. There may
be nothing of truth in the supposed prediction by Tecumseh, that
Tuckabatchee would be destroyed by an earthquake on a day which he
named; the gifts of the "Prophet" may be overstated in the traditions
that yet linger in Kentucky and Indiana; the descent of the Mandans from
Prince Madoc and his adventurous Welchmen, and the consideration
accorded them on that account, may very possibly be altogether fanciful;
but whoever will take the trouble to investigate will find in the _real_
Indian a faith, and occasionally a power, that quite equal the faculties
claimed by our civilized clairvoyants, and will approach an untrodden
path of curious, if not altogether useful research.

FOOTNOTES:

[E] The Mountain Assinaboins, of which tribe the Black Snake is (if
living) a distinguished ornament, were visited more than a hundred years
since by an English clergyman named Wolsey, who devised an alphabet for
their use. The alphabet is still used by them, and they keep their
memoranda on dressed skins. With the exception of the Cherokees, they
are, perhaps, the only tribe possessing a written language. They have no
other civilization.

[F] I do not feel at liberty to give the name of this excellent man, now
perhaps no more. In 1861, he lived and labored, with a gentleness and
zeal worthy of the cause he heralded, as a missionary among the
Kalispelm Indians, on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. Such
devotion to missionary labor as was his may well challenge admiration
even from those who think him in fatal error. His memory will long be
cherished by those who knew the purity of his character, his generous
catholicity of spirit, and the native and acquired graces of mind which
made him a companion at once charming and instructive.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

O thou great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And look with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o'er;
Thy bondmen crouch no more
In terror at the menace of thine eye;
For He who marks the bounds of guilty powe