Many of the Asiatic nations and African tribes sell their children without compunction; but no emolument or hope of advantage can induce a North American Indian to part with his child to strangers. Of the tenderness with which the American Indians regard their offspring, Buchanan witnessed the following manifestation:— “A mother with an infant at her breast, and two other children, one about eleven and the other eight or nine years of age, were in a canoe near a mile from land, during a violent squall. The wind came in sudden gusts, and the waves dashed in rapid succession over the frail vessel. The poor woman, with a small oar in one hand and the other surrounding her babe, directed the two young ones, who each had a paddle, to get the head of the canoe to the wind while the squall lasted; which, with much labour on the part of these tender little mariners, aided by the mother, was at length effected; but during the effort it was very touching to see the strong emotions of maternal love, evidenced to the poor infant at her breast. She would clasp it tightly to her agitated bosom, then cast a momentary look at her other children, and with an anxious and steady gaze, watch the coming wave. In this scene was exhibited such high degrees of fortitude, dexterity, and parental affection, that I would have wished many of our civilized mothers, who look and think with contempt on the poor Indian, had beheld her.” It might be expected that those who display such tenderness to their offspring, should be particularly careful of their subsequent education. Accordingly, we find that the Indians pay particular attention to this matter. “It may be justly a subject of wonder,” says Mr. Heckewelder, “how a nation without a written code of laws or system of jurisprudence, without any form or constitution of government, and without even a single elective or hereditary magistrate, can subsist together in peace and harmony, and in the exercise of the moral virtues; how a people can be well and effectually governed, without any external authority, by the mere force of the ascendency which men of superior minds have over those of a more ordinary stamp; by a tacit, yet universal submission to the aristocracy of experience, talent, and virtue! Such, nevertheless, is the spectacle which an Indian nation exhibits to the eye of a stranger. I have been a witness to it for a long series of years, and after much observation and reflection to discover the cause of this phenomenon, I think I have reason to be satisfied that it is in a great degree to be ascribed _to the pains which the Indians take to instil at an early age honest and virtuous principles into the minds of their children, and to the method which they pursue in educating them_. This method I will not call a system, for systems are unknown to these sons of nature, who, by following alone her dictates, have at once discovered, and followed without effort, that plain obvious path which the philosophers of Europe