The Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois nations had many institutions and customs in common. Every clan had some such totem as I have described in the case of the Iroquois. Every tribe had its chiefs as military leaders and its councils for deliberation and decision. Consequently the democratic principle dominated the whole organisation. Eloquence was always prized and cultivated as a necessity of the system of government. Some tribes had their special orators among the chiefs. Though a general {124} war was dependent on the action of the council, yet any number of warriors might go on the warpath at any time against the enemies of the tribe. They had no written records, but their memories were aided in council or otherwise by reeds or sticks and rude pictures; strings of wampum--cleverly manufactured from shells--served as annals, which the skilled men of a tribe could decipher and explain. The wampum belts performed an important part in the declaration of war or peace, and the pipe was equally effective in the deliberations of council and in the profession of amity. Murder might be expiated by presents to the family or relatives of the dead, and crime was rarely followed by death except there was a question of other nations, who would not be content unless the blood of their kinsman was washed away by blood. Charity and hospitality were among the virtues of the Indian race, especially among the Iroquois, and while there was food in a village no one need starve. The purity of love was unknown to a savage nature, chiefly animated by animal passion. Prisoners were treated with great ferocity, but the Iroquois exceeded all nations in the ingenuity of torture. Stoicism and endurance, even heroic, were characteristics of Indians generally, when in the hands of their enemies, and the cruellest insult that a warrior could receive was to be called a woman. Sometimes prisoners were spared and adopted into the tribe, and among most nations the wife or mother or sister of a dead chief might demand that he be replaced by a prisoner to whom they may have taken a fancy. After torture parts {125} of the bodies of the victim would be eaten as a sort of mystic ceremony, but this custom was peculiar to the Hurons and Iroquois only. In their warlike expeditions they had no special discipline, and might be successfully met on the open field or under the protection of fortified works. Their favourite system was a surprise or furious onslaught. A siege soon exhausted their patience and resources. They were as treacherous as they were brave. In the shades of the forest, whose intricacies and secrets they understood so well, they were most to be feared. Behind every tree might lurk a warrior, when once a party was known to be on the warpath. To steal stealthily at night through the mazes of the woods, tomahawk their sleeping foes, and take many scalps, was the height of an Indian's bliss. Curious to say, the Indians took little precautions to