relates, Colonel Stone has shown a commendable industry. But his work is only begun. The mere record of a chieftain’s life, however celebrated the individual may be, is secondary to the history of a mighty people and the inquiry into its origin. We care little, comparatively, when or how Red Jacket spoke, but we do care whence his people came. Our object is to learn the polity and customs of his nation, to analyze its language—in short, thoroughly to understand its history and character. To do this is what constitutes Colonel Stone’s design, but as yet he has only incidentally carried out his plan. Neither the life of Brandt nor that of Red Jacket does more than skim over the great question our author has proposed to discuss. Biography is not history: the narrative of a few land treaties is not the account of a nation’s glory. As the greatest people of the Indian race, and as the conquerors of the Alligewi, we feel an interest in dissipating the obscurity which attends the origin of the Six Nations. It is in vain to say such an attempt would be fruitless. Has it ever been methodically, analytically, perseveringly tried? Why does Colonel Stone avoid this portion of his subject—the portion which should naturally claim his attention first? We tell him frankly that he would gain ten times more reputation, and prove himself possessed of ten times more talent, if he would come up to this matter gallantly, and not scour around and around it, like a frightened hound. Red Jacket was a sachem or civil chief among the Senecas. He seems to have been of no family, and to have won his way to the first place in the councils of his people, by his tact, his patriotism, and, more than all his eloquence. Few men have ever lived who surpassed him in oratory, if we may judge his proficiency in that art by the effect he produced on his hearers. All that has been related of Demosthenes and Cicero among the ancients, or of Bolingbroke and Chatham among the moderns, may be applied with equal truth to this great orator of the Senecas. When he rose to speak not a word was heard—when he took his seat his enthusiasm infected all. He was even able to carry his point when superstition, in its darkest guise, was arrayed against him. Some specimens, at least, of such wonderful powers of eloquence may naturally be expected to have come down to us; yet, with but one or two exceptions, his printed speeches are tame to mediocrity. Much of this, no doubt, is to be attributed to incompetent translations: indeed, our author lays the whole fault at this door. But there is another and simpler reason, to which Colonel Stone has not alluded.