“On expressing our wish to be informed by what means they became acquainted with copper, and why it was such a peculiar object of their admiration, a son of Hannapa, one of the Nootkan chiefs, a youth of uncommon sagacity, informed us of all he knew on the subject; and we found, to our surprise, that his story involved a little sketch of their religion. When words were wanting he supplied the deficiency by those expressive actions which nature or necessity seems to communicate to people whose language is imperfect; and the young Nootkan conveyed his ideas by signs so skilfully as to render them perfectly intelligible. He related his story in the following manner:— “He first placed a certain number of sticks on the ground, at small distances from each other, to which he gave separate names. Thus, he called the first his father, and the next his grandfather: he then took what remained and threw them all into confusion together, as much as to say that they were the general heap of his ancestors, whom he could not individually reckon. “He then, pointing to this bundle, said, when they lived an old man entered the sound[77] in a copper canoe, with copper paddles, and everything else in his possession of the same metal; that he paddled along the shore, on which all the people were assembled to contemplate so strange a sight, and that, having thrown one of his copper paddles on shore, he himself landed. The extraordinary stranger then told the natives that he came from the sky, to which the boy pointed with his hand; that their country would one day be destroyed, when they would all be killed, and rise again to live in the place from whence he came. “Our young interpreter explained this circumstance of his narrative by lying down as if he were dead, and then, rising up suddenly, he imitated the action as if he were soaring through the air. He continued to inform us that the people killed the old man, and took his canoe, from which event they derived their fondness for copper; and he added that the images in their houses were intended to represent the form, and perpetuate the mission, of this supernatural person who came from the sky.” Thus ended the glorious life of the man of God. His death was as mysterious to his followers in America, as was his disappearance and supposed death to the Israelites in Asia. He was the first missionary who carried the glad tidings of God’s good-will towards an erring world; and he died the death of a martyr at the hands of the very world that he came to enlighten.