They have many of them a good uncultivated genius, are fond of speaking well, as that paves the way to power in their councils; and I doubt not but the reader will find some beauties in the harangues I have given him, which I assure him are entirely genuine. Their language is not unpleasant, but vastly aspirated, and the accents so many and various, you would often imagine them singing in their common discourse. As the ideas of the Cherokees are so few, I cannot say much for the copiousness of their language. They seldom turn their eyes on the person they speak of, or address themselves to, and are always suspicious when people’s eyes are fixed upon them. They speak so low, except in council, that they are often obliged to repeat what they were saying; yet should a person talk to any of them above their common pitch, they would immediately ask him, if he thought they were deaf? They have likewise a sort of loose poetry, as the war-songs, love-songs, &c. Of the latter many contain no more than that the young man loves the young woman, and will be uneasy, according to their own expression, if he does not obtain her. Of the former I shall present the following specimen, without the original in Cherokee, on account of the expletive syllables, merely introduced for the music, and not the sense, just like the toldederols of many old English songs. A TRANSLATION of the WAR-SONG. _Caw waw noo dee, &c._ Where’er the earth’s enlighten’d by the sun, Moon shines by night, grass grows, or waters run, Be’t known that we are going, like men, afar, In hostile fields to wage destructive war; Like men we go, to meet our country’s foes, Who, woman-like, shall fly our dreaded blows; Yes, as a woman, who beholds a snake, In gaudy horror, glisten thro’ the brake, Starts trembling back, and stares with wild surprise, Or pale thro’ fear, unconscious, panting, flies. [5]Just so these foes, more tim’rous than the hind, Shall leave their arms and only cloaths behind; Pinch’d by each blast, by ev’ry thicket torn, Run back to their own nation, now its scorn: Or in the winter, when the barren wood Denies their gnawing entrails nature’s food, Let them sit down, from friends and country far, And wish, with tears, they ne’er had come to war. [6]We’ll leave our clubs, dew’d with their country show’rs, And, if they dare to bring them back to our’s, Their painted scalps shall be a step to fame, And grace our own and glorious country’s name. Or if we warriors spare the yielding foe, Torments at home the wretch must undergo[7]. Footnote 5: As the Indians fight naked, the vanquished are constrained to endure the rigours of the weather in their flight, and live upon roots and fruit, as they throw down their arms to accelerate their flight thro’ the woods. Footnote 6: