But whether we are right or not in our supposition as to the origin of this idea—namely, that the articles buried in the tomb with the deceased would be useful to him in an after life—it is plain that such an idea has been entertained, and certainly all our learned writers upon these ancient customs of burial attribute this motive to our imaginative forefathers. When, in the old pagan burrows of the wold of Yorkshire or elsewhere, some British or Saxon charioteer has been exhumed, with the iron wheel-tires and bronzed horse-furniture (the wreck of the decayed war-chariot), and the skeletons of the horses, eloquent antiquarians have not failed to say (as Mr Wilson does) that the dead chief was buried thus “that he might enter the Valhalla of his gods, proudly borne in the chariot in which he had been wont to charge amid the ranks of his foes.” We presume they find themselves justified in this interpretation. Here, again, we find that the new continent sets almost before the eyes of our traveller scenes similar to those which, as a European archæologist, he had been laboriously endeavouring to reconstruct in some remote antiquity. “Upwards of forty years since, Black Bird, a famous chief of the Omahaws, visited the city of Washington, and on his return was seized with smallpox, of which he died on the way. When the chief found himself dying, he called his warriors around him, and, like Jacob of old, gave commands concerning his burial, which were as literally fulfilled. The dead warrior was dressed in his most sumptuous robes, fully equipped with his scalps and war-eagle’s plumes, and borne about sixty miles below the Omahaw village to a lofty bluff on the Missouri, which towers far above all the neighbouring heights, and commands a magnificent extent of landscape. To the summit of this bluff a beautiful white steed, the favourite war-horse of Black Bird, was led; and there, in presence of the whole nation, the dead chief was placed with great ceremony on its back, looking towards the river, where, as he had said, he could see the canoes of the white men as they traversed the broad waters of the Missouri. His bow was placed in his hand, his shield and quiver, with his pipe and medicine-bag, hung by his side. His store of pemmican and his well-filled tobacco-pouch were supplied, to sustain him on the long journey to the hunting-grounds of the great Manitou, where the spirits of his fathers awaited his coming. The medicine-men of the tribe performed their most mystic charms to secure a happy passage to the land of the great departed; and all else being completed, each warrior of the chiefs own band covered the palm of his right hand with vermilion, and stamped its impress on the white sides of the devoted war-steed. This done, the Indians gathered turfs and soil, and placed them around the feet and the legs of the horse. Gradually the pile arose under the combined