them to artificial ponds or lakes, vast tetragon terraces, chunkyards, and obelisks or pillars of wood, are the only monuments of labor, ingenuity, and magnificence that I have seen, worthy of notice." Later researches have led to the discovery that Chunkee was the Indian name of a game played with a flat, round stone and a pole about eight feet long; the former was rolled forward and the pole thrown at the same time, by two players, and he whose pole came nearest to the stone won the game.

As the Indians have been led by their white friends to consider a present in the light of an exchange only, being always expected to give much land for little value, this has given rise to the term Indian Giver, meaning a child, or a man, who desires the return of his gift. Among the articles which unfortunately still constitute the staple of all such presents, spirits of some kind, or firewater, as the English-speaking Indians often call it, holds, of course, a prominent rank. It is a sad index to the nature of the vast majority of such transactions between white and red men, that the term Indian Liquor is universally known to mean adulterated whiskey. Nor is water the only element of adulteration: tobacco, red pepper, and other condiments are apt to be added in large quantities by dishonest dealers and agents.

Wild orchards of ungrafted apple and peach trees are frequently called Indian orchards, under an erroneous impression that they were planted by the red men; but, except in the more prosperous Indian Reservations or Reserves, tracts of land secured to them by the government, and in regions where they have long been permanently settled, as in the Territory of the Choctaws, the poor Indian is not apt to plant trees; besides, he is fully aware that ungrafted peach-trees are apt to be hardier and more productive than the finer varieties.

Of all the subjects connected with the original race in American life none holds probably a more prominent place in the mind of the masses than the Indian Summer, a short but surpassingly beautiful season in the latter part of autumn. A similar spell of fine weather, as it is called by another Americanism, is noticed in other countries also, and frequently compared to the halcyon period of the Greeks, so that Shakespeare could pointedly say:

'Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days,"—(Henry VI., Part 1, in allusion to what he elsewhere calls:

"Farewell thou latter spring,

Farewell all hallown summer."-(Henry IV.)

B.)

In England the season derived its name of Saint Martin's or Martin Mass Summer, from the fact that it commonly begins there about November 11, St. Martin's day; on the Continent it is called Summer Close and "l'été de St. Martin," with an ungallant double meaning, which allows the term to be applied to ladies of advancing years. It may be that there is an association of the same idea, though less delicately expressed, in the German "Alte Weiber Sommer,” while in Chili it is called St. John's Summer. In the United States, this season, when "twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill," generally begins in November, though the period varies within a month. It is characterized by fair but not brilliant weather; the air is smoky and hazy, perfectly still and moist; and the sun shines dimly, but softly and sweetly, through an atmosphere that some call copper-colored and others golden, in accordance with their power of poetical perception. The name of Indian Summer is differently explained. The Rev. James Freeman derives it from the fact that the Indians are particularly fond of it, regarding it as a special gift of their favorite god, the god of the Southwest, who sends the soft southwest winds, and to whom they go after death. Daniel Webster said that the early settlers gave that name to the season because they ascribed its peculiar features, the heat and the haze, to the burning of the prairies by the Indians at that time. Mr. Kercheval, however, gives a more plausible explanation: "It sometimes happened, that after the apparent onset of winter, the weather became warm; the smoky time commenced, and lasted for a considerable number of days. This was the Indian Summer, because it afforded the Indians-who during the severe winter never made any incursions into the settlements-another opportunity of visiting them with their destructive warfare. The melting of the snow saddened every countenance, and the genial warmth of the sun chilled every heart with horror. The apprehension of another visit from the Indians and of being driven back to the detested fort, was painful in the highest degree." (Hist. of the Valley of Virginia, p. 190.) ·

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Many Indian terms have become so incorporated into American speech, and have, at times, struck their roots so deep into public institutions, as to have become almost true Americanisms. Such are wigwam and wampum. The former is the Anglicized form of a phrase in the Natic dialect of the Algonquin family; here wékouomút meant "in his or her house," and the curtailed word wékouam was the true ancestor of the modern wigwam in the sense of an Indian's hut or cabin. The original hut, generally made of skins and affording but scanty shelter in protracted bad weather, stands in strange contrast with the imposing building in New York, in which the wigwam, i. e., the headquarters of a Democratic organization of great power and influence are now established. This political body derives its name of Tammany, and that of Tammany Hall, from an ancient chief of the Narragansett Indians, called Miantonomu, who had his seat on Tammany, a hill north of Newport, where he and Canonicus sold, in 1638, Aquiduct or the Isle of Peace, now the State of Rhode Island, for twentythree broadcloth coats and thirteen hoes, as also two torkepes." Political adversaries will have it that this mode of "selling" has not yet gone out of practice at the place that now bears the name. Ordinarily such sales were made, and if not made, confirmed in wampum, the current coin of the Indians. This consisted of strings of shells, which were frequently united into a broad belt, worn as an ornament or a girdle. Wampum, an Algonquin word, meant originally nothing more than "white" and served to designate only inferior shells, which were white, and, according to the accounts of colonial chroniclers, were held equal to silver, while the peac, or "black"-whence wampumpeage-were compared to gold. Sewan was in Algonquin the name of shell-money generically and Roanoke in Virginia, for which now wampum is used. The white money was made from the shells of Pyrula caniculata, a large pear-shaped univalve, sometimes called "periwinkle." The part used was the columella or pillar, the whorls being broken off; they were not eatable, like the English periwinkle, and attained considerable size. The more costly beads came from the largest shells of the Quahaug or Cohog, a welk, known in the Middle and Southern States as the Round Clam, and belonging to the genus Venus mercenaria, which is so called on account of their being used as currency. The inner surface of these shells is beau

tifully polished, the centre of the valves pure white, and part of the outside mantle of a rich violet. This border the Narragansett Indians made into the blue shell-money, which they call Suckanhock, by breaking it into small pieces and rubbing them with stones till they were cylindrical and could be drilled lengthwise. It seems almost incredible that the Indians should have done this, and done it so very neatly, without metallic tools, and yet Roger Williams says, expressly: "before ever they had awle-blades from Europe they made shift to bore this, their shell-money, with stones." (Key to the Indian Languages, p. 150.) Of the use of sewan a writer on the "New Netherlands in 1679," says, quoting from a journal of that year: "We sat down before the fire. There had been thrown upon it, to be roasted, a pailful of Gowanus oysters, which are the best in the country. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot long. We had for supper a haunch of venison, which he had bought of the Indians for three guilders and a half of seewant, that is, fifteen stuivers of Dutch money, and which weighed thirty pounds." (Putnam's Magazine, April, 1858.) ·

Like the precious metal, these shells served at the same time for ornaments and for money, and being strung were worn in bracelets and necklaces. The Indians have always been exceedingly fond of personal ornaments, and the great chief who now-a-days delights the crowds in Washington by stalking down the avenue in all his bravery and finery, had his prototype in the warrior described thus a hundred years ago: "One of them was a Delaware chief; he wore the badges of his office, the wampum belt, three half-moons, and a silver plate on his breast; bands of silver on both arms, and his ears cut round and ornamented with silver; the hair on the top of his head was done up with silver wire.” (The Johnson Boys' Account of their Escape in 1788.) When made up into belts or bands, four inches wide and three to five feet long, they were exchanged in ratification of treaties, and given and received as title-deeds. The two colors were at times wrought together in patterns, and by a methodical arrangement made to aid the memory. As the female revolutionists of Paris registered, according to Dickens's account, the doomed aristocrats in their knitting, so the Indians wove the story of the past and the promise of the future into wampum belts. Father Marquette tells us,

moreover, that words addressed to the Indians, when not accompanied by a wampum belt, were considered not important, and that the missionary, who first announced the gospel in a village, always spoke by the "belt of the prayer," which he held in his hands, and which remained to witness his words when the sound had died away. A similar use is made on the Pacific Coast of another variety of shells, called Haiqua (Dentalium), which the natives use mainly for ornaments, but in certain localities also employ after the manner of wampum. "The men did not think their gala-equipments complete, unless they had a jewel of haiqua, or wampum, dangling at the nose." (W. Irving's Astoria, II. p. 87.) Another Indian term still prominent in the organization of great political bodies in America is the name of the presiding officer of the before-mentioned fraction of the Democratic party, their Sachem. This term seems to have been peculiar to Northern Indians, since Captain John Smith calls the head of the Virginia Indians King, and then continues: "His (Powhatan's) inferior kings, whom they call Werowances, are tyed to rule by custom; the commander they call Caucorouse, which is captain" (Hist of Va., I. p. 143), while Beverley says, "a cockarouse is one that has the honor to be of the king or queen's council, with relation to the affairs of government." (Hist. of the Valley of Va., III. 117.) The word, which has a suspicious English sound about it, became, perhaps on that account, a favorite in the South, and was long used to designate a person of consequence among the Red men, although already the Swedish-Indian Dictionary of 1696 calls the chief Saccheeman. This term Sachem and the equally familiar Sagamore, often considered distinct terms, are in reality one and the same; so far from meaning two different things, they are simply variations of the original Sakemo, the name for a chief in all the New England dialects. Captain John Smith explained the meaning thus: "For their government: every Sachem is not a king, but their great Sachems have divers Sachems under their protection, paying them tribute, and dare make no warres without his knowledge, but every Sachem cares for the widowes, orphans, the aged, and maimed." (Hist. of Va., II. p. 238.) The modern poet, for his part, describes his appearance in these words: