leys, which afford a habitation to man. No country on the globe
abounds with so many beautiful lakes of every size, and our rivers
display a succession of cataracts and falls, alike attractive to the eye
of taste and art.

Is all this profusion designed to employ the pens of naturalists and
statesmen only? Is there no field in the mighty past, for the
philosopher and the historian? for the ethnologist and the antiquarian?
Is civilized man alone the only object, wanting in the consideration of
its former history? We answer, no. Centuries on centuries have passed
away, since first the Red man planted his foot on this continent. The
very paucity of his knowledge and simplicity of his arts, tell a story
of great antiquity. The diversities of language answer to the same end.
And, for aught that is known, long before the eras of Socrates and
Pythagoras, Plato and Confucius, the Mongol and the Persian. The Tartar
and the Mesopotamean, the Chinese and Japanese, and we know not how many
other shades of the Red man of Asia, were in AWONEO[E] or America. Of
their wonderful histories and wars and overturnings, by land and sea,
of their mixtures and intermixtures of blood and language and lineage
and nationality, we know little, or nothing. But, after all the
centuries of separation, we find in his physiological characteristics
and conformation of visage and expression, the same Asiatic type of
man--whom the first adventurers to these shores, did not hesitate to
pronounce the man of India. Use, has perpetuated the term, and if the
discoveries of geography, have, ages since, shown the appellation of
Indians, in the sense then employed, to be incorrect, physiologists and
ethnographers, have but found stronger and stronger proofs, that Asia,
in preference to every other quarter of the globe, was the true land of
his origin.

[E] Onondaga.

* * * * *

PREFACE.

In Indian mythology may be found the richest poetic materials. An
American Author is unworthy of the land that gave him birth if he passes
by with indifference this well-spring of inspiration, sending liberally
forth a thousand enchanted streams. It has given spiritual inhabitants
to our valleys, rivers, hills and inland seas; it has peopled the dim
and awful depths of our forests with spectres, and, by the power of
association, given our scenery a charm that will make it attractive
forever. The material eye is gratified by a passing g