difficulty of accustoming savages to subordination, or to act in concert; such is their impatience under restraint, that it is rarely they can be brought to conform themselves to the counsels and directions of their leaders. They never station sentinels around the place where they rest at night; and, after marching some hundred of miles to surprise an enemy, are often surprised themselves, and cut off, while sunk in a profound sleep, as if they were not within the reach of danger.

If they catch an enemy unprepared, they rush upon them with the utmost ferocity; and tearing off the scalps of all those who fall victims to their rage, they carry home those strange trophies in triumph. But they are still more solicitous to seize prisoners, whom, in their return, they guard from insult, and treat with humanity. As soon, however, as they approach their own frontier, some of their number are dispatched to inform their countrymen of the success of the expedition. Then the prisoners begin to feel the wretchedness of their condition. The women of the village, together with the youth who have not attained the age of bearing arms, assemble, and, forming themselves into two lines, through which the prisoners must pass, beat and bruise them with sticks or stones in a cruel manner. After this first gratification of their rage, follow lamentations for the loss of such of their countrymen as have fallen in the service, accompanied with words and actions which seem to express the utmost anguish and grief. But in a moment, on a signal being given, their tears cease, and they begin to celebrate their victory with all the wild exultations of a barbarous triumph. The fate of the prisoners remains still undecided. The old men deliberate concerning it. Some are des

tined to be tortured to death, in order to satiate the revenge of the conquerors; some to replace the members which the community has lost in that and former wars. They who are reserved for this milder fate, are led to the huts of those whose friends have been killed. The women meet them at the door, and, if they receive them, their sufferings are at an end. They are adopted into the family, and thenceforward are treated with all the tenderness due to a father, a brother, a husband, or a friend. But if the women refuse to accept of the prisoner who is offered to them, his doom is fixed. No power can then save him from death.' Those thus devoted to death are tied to a stake, and all who are present, men, women, and children, rush upon them like furies. Every species of torture is applied that rancour or revenge can invent. Nothing sets bounds to their rage, but the fear of abridging the duration of their vengeance by hastening the death of the sufferers; and such is their cruel ingenuity in tormenting, that they often prolong this scene of anguish for several days. In spite of all they suffer, the victims continue to chant their death-song with a firm voice; boast of their own exploits; insult their tormentors, and warn them of the vengeance which awaits them on account of what they are now doing. To display undaunted fortitude in such dreadful situations is the noblest triumph of a warrior. Animated with this thought, they endure, without a groan, what seems almost impossible for human nature to sustain. They appear not only insensible of pain, but to court it: "Forbear," said an aged chief of the Iroquois, when his insults had provoked one of his tormentors to wound him with a knife, "forbear these stabs of

your knife, and rather let me die by fire, that those dogs, your allies, from beyond the sea, may learn by my example to suffer like men.”

This barbarous scene is often succeeded by one no less shocking, namely, that of eating their enemies. Human flesh was never used as common food in any country; the rancour of revenge first prompted men to this barbarous action. The fiercest tribes devoured none but prisoners taken in war, or such as they regarded as enemies. The perpetual hostilities carried on among the American tribes are productive of fatal effects: the loss of men is considerable among them, in proportion to the degree of population. Sensible of this decay, there are tribes which endeavour to recruit their national force, when exhausted, by adopting prisoners taken in war, and by this expedient prevent their total extinction. The practice, however, is not universally received. Resentment operates more powerfully among savages than considerations of policy.

But though war be the chief occupation of men in their rude state, and to excel in it their highest distinction and pride, their inferiority is always manifest when they engage in competition with polished nations. Destitute of that foresight which discerns and provides for remote events, they are strangers to union and mutual confidence, and incapable of subordination. Savage nations may astonish a disciplined enemy by their valour, but seldom prove formidable to him by their conduct; and when the contest is of long continuance, must yield to superior knowledge.

VI. The arts of rude nations unacquainted with the use of metals hardly merit any attention on their own account, but are worthy of some notice,

as they serve to display the genius and manners of man in this stage of his progress. The first distress a savage must feel will arise from the manner in which his body is affected by the heat, or cold, or moisture, of the climate under which he lives; and his first care will be to provide some covering for his defence. In the warmer and more mild climates of America none of the rude tribes were clothed. To most of them nature had not even suggested any idea of impropriety in being altogether uncovered. Others were satisfied with some slight covering, such as decency required. But though naked, they were not unadorned.They dressed their hair in different forms. They fastened bits of gold, or shells, or shining stones, in their ears, their noses, and cheeks. They stained their skins with great variety of figures, and spent much time, and submitted to great pain in ornamenting their persons in this fantastic manner. Vanity, however, which finds endless occupation for ingenuity and invention in nations where dress has become a complex and intricate art, is circumscribed within so narrow bounds, and is confined to so few articles among naked savages, that they are not satisfied with those simple decorations, and have a wonderful propensity to alter the natural form of their bodies, in order to render it, as they imagine, more perfect and beautiful. This prac tice was universal among the rudest of the American tribes, and the operations for that purpose began as soon as the infant was born. In all their attempts either to adorn or new-model their persons, it seems to have been less the object of the Americans to please, or to appear beautiful, than to give an air of dignity and terror to their aspect.

Their regard to dress had more reference to war than to gallantry.

The next object to dress that will engage the attention of the savage, is to prepare a habitation which may afford him a shelter by day and a retreat by night. Some of the American tribes had advanced so little beyond the primeval simplicity of nature, that they had no houses at all. During the day they take shelter from the scorching rays of the sun under thick trees; at night they form a shed with their branches and leaves. In the rainy season they retire into coves formed by the hand of nature, or hollowed out by their own industry. Others sojourn in temporary huts which they erect with little labour, and abandon without concern. The inhabitants of those vast plains which are deluged with periodical rains, raise houses upon piles fastened in the ground, or place them among the boughs of trees, and are thus safe amidst that wide extended inundation which surrounds them. Such were the first essays of the rudest Americans towards providing themselves with habitations. One circumstance merits attention, as it is singular, and illustrates the character of the people. Some of their houses are so large as to afford accommodation for a hundred persons. These are built for the reception of different families which dwell together under the same roof, and often round a common fire, without separate apartments, or any kind of partition between the spaces which they respectively occupy. As soon as men have acquired distinct ideas of property, or when they are so much attached to their females as to watch them with care and jealousy, families, of course, divide and settle in separate houses, where