OF NATURE AND ART. СНАР. II. OF NORTH AMERICA. (Continued.) Customs, Manners, Religion, and Government BETWEEN Hudson's Bay and California, there are several tribes of Indians, some of whom are known to Europeans, particularly the Neheth-aw-a Indians, the Assinne patues, the Fall Indians, the Sassures, the Black feet Indians, the Blood Indians, and the Paegans.-These are names given by themselves; and there are Spanish traders settled among them from the other side of the continent, making their inland excursions from California, as the English do from Canada and New Britain. The usual dress of these Indians consists of a pair of stockings, made of pliable leather; a sort of loose jacket with sleeves of the same kind, and over all a drest buffalo-skin. Young men dress their hair in different forms, and paint their faces according to their fancies; but older persons seldom tie their hair or paint their faces. A drest VOL. X. otter-skin, however, is usually wound round their heads, and the ends are suffered to hang down the back. The women's dress is nearly similar. All these Indians are much inclined to a lean habit of body, and are, in general, very swift of foot. Charlevoix tells us of one man who assured him, that before he had eaten any bread he could walk forty miles a day without fatigue, but that since he had been used to bread, he could not travel with the same ease.-As their country abounds with innumerable herds of deer, elks, and buffaloes, they frequently make great slaughter among them, from a ridiculous opinion that the more they kill, the more they have to kill; and to this notion they are enthusiastically bigotted, though they sometimes find the folly of it to their cost, suffering occasionally such extreme hunger through it, that parents have been reduced to the sad necessity of devouring their own offspring. Yet they have a philosophy that reconciles all this, and a degree of composure superior to most men. An Indian after being out a whole day upon the hunt, exposed to the bleakest winds, without any thing to satisfy the calls of nature, comes home, warms himself at the fire, smokes a few pipes of tobacco, and then retires to rest, as calm as if in the midst of plenty. This, however, does not proceed from insensibility; for if he happen to have a family, and that family be reduced to extremity of want, his affection gets the better of his philosophy, and he immediately abandons himself to the most pungent sorrow. then, however, he imputes his distress to supernatural causes, and to the capricious will of some invisible agent, whom he supposes to preside over this undertakings. Even |