“For some time I enjoyed this scene with malicious and demure gravity, and then I showed him that he must try and pull it off over his head. A lad who stood by then drew it till it enveloped his nose, eyes, mouth, and ears; his arms were raised above his head, and for some minutes he remained in that melancholy plight, blinded, choked, and smothered, with his hands rendered useless for the time. He rolled about, sneezing, sputtering, and struggling, until all around him were convulsed with laughter and our squaws shrieked in their ungovernable mirth in a manner that I had never before witnessed. At length I slit a piece of the edge and released the old fellow from his straight-waistcoat confinement; he turned it round often in his hands and made a kind of comic-grave address to it, of which I could only gather a few words: I believe the import of them was that it would be ‘a good creature’ in the ice-month of the village. I was so pleased with his good humour that I gave it to him to warm his squaw in the ‘ice-month.’” As this will probably be the last occasion of discussing in this volume the physical and moral characteristics of the North American Indian, it may not be out of place here to give a brief descriptive sketch of the chief tribes with an account of their strength and power in bygone times and their present condition. The names of Murray, Dominech, Catlin, etc., afford sufficient guarantee of the accuracy of the information here supplied. The Ojibbeway nation occupies a large amount of territory, partly within the United States, and partly within British America. They are the largest community of savages in North America: the entire population, in 1842, amounted to thirty thousand. That part of the tribe occupying territory within the United States inhabit all the northern part of Michigan, the whole northern portion of Wisconsin Territory, all the south shore of Lake Superior, for eight hundred miles, the upper part of the Mississippi, and Sandy, Leech, and Red Lakes. Those of the nation living within the British dominions occupy all Western Canada, the north of Lake Huron, the north of Lake Superior, the north of Lake Winnibeg, and the north of Red River Lake, about one hundred miles. The whole extent of territory occupied by this single nation, extends one thousand nine hundred miles east and west, and from two to three hundred miles north and south. There are about five thousand in British America, and twenty-five thousand in the United States. Of their past history nothing is known, except what may be gathered from their traditions. All the chiefs and elder men of the tribe agree that they originally migrated from the west. A great number of their traditions are doubtless unworthy of credence, but a few that relate to the foundation of the world, the subsequent disobedience of the people,--which, the Ojibbeways say, was brought about by climbing of a vine that connected the world of spirits with the human race,