entirely distinct from that in the vicinity. It is of no avail to enquire, why the builders should have encountered the immense toil, to bring these hills of earth from another place.

"Our country has been described abroad, as sterile of moral interest. We have, it is said, no monuments, no ruins, none of the colossal remains of temples, and baronial castles, and monkish towers; nothing to connect the imagination and the heart with the past; none of the dim recollections of times gone by, to associate the past with the future. We have not travelled in other lands. But in passing over our vast prairies, in viewing our noble and ancient forests, planted by nature, and nurtured only by ages; when we have seen the sun rising over a boundless plain, where the blue of the heavens in all directions touched, and mingled with the verdure of the flowers; when our thoughts have traversed rivers of a thousand leagues in length; when we have seen the ascending steam-boat breasting the surge, and gleaming through the verdure of the trees; when we have imagined the happy multitudes, that from these shores will contemplate this scenery in days to come; we have thought, that our great country might at least compare with any other, in the beauty of its natural scenery. When, on an uninhabited prairie, we have fallen at nightfall upon a group of these mounds, we have thought of the masses of human bones, that moulder beneath; when the heart and the imagination evoke the busy multitudes, that here strutted through life's poor play,' and ask the phantoms who and what they were, and why they have left no memorials, but these

mounds; we have found ample scope for reflections and associations of the past with the future. We should not highly estimate the mind, or the heart of the man, who could behold these tombs of the prairies without deep thought."

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE LEADING INDIAN TRIBES OF THE WEST.*

In the preceding pages we have given a rapid view of the manners, customs and antiquities of the North America savages. Our design has been to exhibit them as they were at the period when our forefathers first became acquainted with them, some two centuries ago and at the same time to suggest how far the present tribes have preserved, and how far discarded the manners of their forefathers. In general, it may be said, that the present Indian of the west is the same as the red man that figures in the page of New England and Virginian colonial history; the same in aspect and character; the same in his physical, moral and intellectual conformation; the same in his thoughts and modes of life, except so far as contact with the white races has degraded him, or the introduction of a few of the arts of civilization, has modified his existence. He has now the horse and the rifle, the steel knife and the iron tomahawk; he has blankets, instead of skins, and kettles of iron instead of stone. But still he is, for the most part, a savage,-living chiefly by the chase, and finding his greatest delight

*For a view of the several Western tribes, see Cabinet Library, volume —, "History of the American Indians,” page 287, and onward.

in taking the scalps of his enemy. He is still the same superstitious child of nature-referring everything he cannot explain to the agency of unseen spirits; cherishing revenge against his enemies as a cardinal virtue, and looking to heaven for reward, in proportion to the number of warriors he has slain. It may, therefore, be said, that the customs of former times, are for the most part those of to-day. But for the purpose of showing distinctly the difference between the past and the present, we shall proceed to give a rapid sketch of some of the great tribes of the west, as they now appear, exhibiting their peculiar and striking characteristics.

inhabits a fine territory upon the Red River, within the limits of Texas, yet bordering upon the State of Louisiana. This is their home, but they wander westward and exercise a sort of casual domain over the wilds as far as the Pacific. They have long held an Ishmaelite character among their neighbors, and the adjacent Spaniards have often suffered from their depredations. Mr. Flint has drawn the following glowing picture of their country.

"At the extremity of the village, the torrent, whose sources were in the mountains, poured down, from a prodigious elevation, a white and perpendicular cascade, which seemed a sheet suspended in the air. It falls into a circular basin, paved with blue limestone of some rods in circuit. The dash near at hand has