Although the story as here given bears plain impress of the white man’s ideas, it is essentially aboriginal. While the discrimination expressed by the Master of Life in favor of the French and against the English may have been due to the fact that the author of the manuscript was a Frenchman, it is more probable that we have here set forth only the well-known preference of the wild tribes. The occupancy of a region by the English always meant the speedy expulsion of the natives. The French, on the contrary, lived side by side with the red men, joining in their dances and simple amusements, and entering with fullest sympathy into their wild life, so that they were regarded rather as brethren of an allied tribe than as intruders of an alien race. This feeling is well indicated in the prophet’s narrative, where the Indians, while urged to discard everything that they have adopted from the whites, are yet to allow the French to remain among them, though exhorted to relentless war on the English. The difference received tragic exemplification at Michilimackinac a year later, when a handful of French traders looked on unarmed and unhurt while a crew of maddened savages were butchering, scalping, and drinking the blood of British soldiers. The introduction of the trivial incident of the hat is characteristically Indian, and the confounding of dreams and visions with actual happenings is a frequent result of mental exaltation of common occurrence in the history of religious enthusiasts. The Delaware prophet regards the whole experience as an actual fact instead of a distempered vision induced by long fasts and vigils, and the hieroglyphic prayer—undoubtedly graven by himself while under the ecstasy—is to him a real gift from heaven. The whole story is a striking parallel of the miraculous experiences recounted by the modern apostles of the Ghost dance. The prayer-stick also and the heavenly map, later described and illustrated, reappear in the account of Känakûk, the Kickapoo prophet, seventy years afterward, showing in a striking manner the continuity of aboriginal ideas and methods. The celebrated missionary, Heckewelder, who spent fifty years among the Delawares, was personally acquainted with this prophet and gives a detailed account of his teachings and of his symbolic parchments. He says: