The dances of the Indians, even those at common festivals, are on an extensive scale; requiring to a complete performance forty or fifty persons, who execute their evolutions by following each other round a great fire kindled in the centre. Their movements, monotonous but violent, consist in stamping furiously on the ground, and often brandishing their arms in a manner compared by an able writer to a baker converting flour into dough. They keep good time; but the music is so exceedingly simple, that this implies little merit. They conclude with a long shout or howl, which echoes frightfully through the woods. The dances in celebration of particular events are of a more varied character, and often form a very expressive pantomime. The war-dance is the most favourite and frequent. In this extraordinary performance, a complete image is given of the terrible reality; the war-whoop is sounded with the most frightful yells, the tomahawk is wildly brandished, and the enemy are surprised, seized, and scalped, or carried off for torture. The calumet-dance, which celebrates peace between nations, and the marriage-dance, which represents domestic life, are much more pleasing. Some mention is made of a mystic-dance, carried on by the jugglers or doctors, with strange superstitious ceremonies, and in which a supernatural personage, termed by some the devil, rises and performs; but it does not seem to have been witnessed by any European, and is said to be now in a great measure disused. There are, moreover, games to which the Indians are fondly attached, which, though they be only ranked under the head of amusement, are yet conducted in the same serious manner as their other transactions. Their great parties are said to be collected by supernatural authority, communicated by the jugglers, and they are preceded, like their wars and hunts, by a course of fasting, dreaming, and other means of propitiating fortune. The favourite game is that of the bone, in which small pieces of that substance, resembling dice, and painted of different colours, are thrown in the air, and according to the manner in which they fall the game is decided. Only two persons can play: but a numerous party, and sometimes whole villages, embrace one side or the other, and look on with intense interest. At each throw, especially if it be decisive, tremendous shouts are raised; the players and spectators equally resemble persons possessed; the air rings with invocations to the bones, and to the manitous. Their eagerness sometimes leads to quarreling and even fighting, which on no other occasion ever disturb the interior of these societies. To such a pitch are they occasionally worked up, that they stake successively all they possess, and even their personal liberty; but this description must apply only to the more southern nations, as slavery was unknown among the Canadian Indians.