Monsieur Le Page Du Pratz tells us, he lived seven years, among the Nachee Indians, about one hundred leagues up the Missisippi from New-Orleans; and in order to emulate the Spanish romances of the Indians, in his performance, he affirms their women are double-breasted, which he particularly describes: and then following the Spanish copy, he assures us, the highest rank of their nobles is called suns, and that they only attend the sacred and eternal fire; which he doubtless mentioned, merely to introduce his convex lens, by which he tells us with a great air of confidence, he gained much esteem among them, as by the gift of it, he enabled them to continue their holy fire, if it should casually be near extinguished. According to him, the Chikkasah tongue was the court language of the Missisippi Indians, and that it had not the letter _R_.—The very reverse of which is the truth; for the French and all their red savages were at constant war with them, because of their firm connection with the English, and hated their national name; and as to the language, they could not converse with them, as their dialects are so different from each other. I recited a long string of his well-known stories to a body of gentlemen, well skilled in the languages, rites, and customs of our East and West-Florida Indians, and they agreed that the Koran did not differ more widely from the divine oracles, than the accounts of this writer from the genuine customs of the Indian Americans. The Spanish artists have furnished the savage war-chieftain, or their Emperor Montezuma, with very spacious and beautiful palaces, one of which they raised on pillars of fine jasper; and another wrought with exquisite skill out of marble, jasper, and other valuable stones, with veins glistening like rubies,—they have finished the roof with equal skill, composed of carved and painted cypress, cedar, and pine-trees, without any kind of nails. They should have furnished some of the chambers with suitable pavilions {210} and beds of state; but the bedding and furniture in our northern Indian huts, is the same with what they were pleased to describe, in the wonderful Mexican palaces. In this they have not done justice to the grand red monarch, whom they raised up, (with his 1000 women, or 3000 according to some,) only to magnify the Spanish power by overthrowing him.