Whilst among the Choctaws I wrote down from the lips of one of their chiefs, the following tradition, which seems strongly to favour the supposition that they came from a great distance in the West, and probably from beyond the Rocky Mountains:—_Tradition_. “The Choctaws, a great many winters ago, commenced moving from the country where they then lived, which was a great distance to the West of the great river, and the mountains of snow; and they were a great many years on their way. A great medicine-man led them the whole way, by going before with a red pole, which he stuck in the ground every night where they encamped. This pole was every morning found leaning to the East; and he told them that they must continue to travel to the East, until the pole would stand upright in their encampment, and that there the Great Spirit had directed that they should live. At a place which they named _Nah-ne-wa-ye_ (the sloping hill); the pole stood straight up, where they pitched their encampment, which was one mile square, with the men encamped on the outside, and the women and children in the centre; which is the centre of the old Choctaw nation to ‘this day.’” In the vicinity of the mouth of the Columbia, there are, besides the _Chinooks_, the _Klick-a-tacks_, _Cheehaylas_, _Na-as_, and many other tribes, whose customs are interesting, and of whose manufactures, my Museum contains many very curious and interesting specimens, from which I have inserted a few outlines in +plate+ 210½, to which the reader will refer. Letter _d_, is a correct drawing of a Chinook canoe—_e_, a Na-as war-canoe, curiously carved and painted—_f_, two dishes or ladles for baling their canoes—_g_, a Stikeen mask, curiously carved and painted, worn by the mystery-men when in councils, for the purpose of calling up the Great or Evil Spirits to consult an the policy of peace or war—_h_, custom of the _Na-as_ women of wearing a block of wood in the under lip, which is almost as unaccountable as the custom of flattening the head. Letter _i_, is a drawing of the block, and the exact dimensions of one in the Collection, taken out of the lip of a deceased _Na-as_ woman—_k_, “wapito diggers,” instruments used by the women for digging the wapito, a bulbous root, much like a turnip, which the French Traders call _pomme blanche_, and which I have before described. Letter _l_, _pau-to-mau-gons_, or _po-ko-mo-kons_, war-clubs, the one made by the Indians from a piece of native copper, the other of the bone of the sperm whale. Letter _n_, two very curiously carved pipes, made of black slate and highly polished.