within the same lodge and only look upon the object of her affection. She prevailed at length. Now, the mere circumstance of her residing within the same wigwam made her also the wife of the man, according to the Indian custom; but apparently she was content to forego all the privileges and honours of a wife. She endured, for several months, with uncomplaining resignation, every species of ill usage and cruelty on the part of the first wife, till at length this woman, unable any longer to suffer even the presence of a rival, watched an opportunity as the other entered the wigwam with a load of fire-wood, and cleft her skull with the husband's tomahawk. "And did the man permit all this ?" was the natural question.

"What could he

The answer was remarkable. do? he could not help it: a woman is always absolute mistress in her own wigwam!"

In the end, the murder was not punished. The poor victim having fled from a distant tribe, there were no relatives to take vengeance, or do justice, and it concerned no one else. She lies buried at a short distance from the Sault Ste. Marie, where the murderess and her husband yet live.

Women sometimes perish of grief for the loss of a husband or a child, and men have been known to starve themselves on the grave of a beloved wife. Men have also been known to give up their wives to the traders for goods and whiskey; but this, though forbidden by no law, is considered disreputable, or, as my informant expressed it, "only bad Indians do 80."

I should doubt, from all I see and hear, that the Indian squaw is that absolute slave, drudge, and nonentity in the community, which she has been described. She is despotic in her lodge, and everything it contains is hers; even of the game her husband kills, she has the uncontrolled disposal. If her husband does not please her, she scolds and even cuffs him ; and it is in the highest degree unmanly to answer or strike her. I have seen here a woman scolding and quarrelling with her husband, seize him by the hair, in a style that might have become civilized Billingsgate, or christian St. Giles's, and the next day I have beheld the same couple sit lovingly together on the sunny side of the wigwam, she kneeling behind him, and combing and arranging the hair she had been pulling from his head the day before; just such a group as I remember to have seen about Naples, or the Campagna di Roma, with very little obvious difference either in costume or complexion.

There is no law against marrying near relations, but it is always avoided; it is contrary to their customs: even first cousins do not marry. The tie of blood seems considered as stronger than that of marriage. A woman considers that she belongs more to her own relatives than to her husband or his relatives; yet, notwithstanding this and the facility of divorce, separations between husband and wife are very rare. A couple will go on "squabbling and making it up" all their lives, without having recourse to this expedient. If from displeasure, satiety, or any other cause, a man sends his wife away, she goes back to her relations, and invariably takes her

children with her. The indefeasible right of the mother to her offspring is Indian law, or rather, the contrary notion does not seem to have entered their minds. A widow remains subject to her husband's relations for two years after his death; this is the decent period of mourning. At the end of two years, she returns some of the presents made to her by her late husband, goes back to her own relatives, and may marry again.

You will understand that these particulars, and others which may follow, apply to the Chippewas and the Ottawas around me; other tribes have other customs. I speak merely of those which are brought under my own immediate observation and attention. During the last American war of 1813, the young widow of a chief who had been killed in battle, assumed his arms, ornaments, wampum, medal, and went out with several war parties, in which she dis. tinguished herself by her exploits. Mrs. Schoolcraft, when a girl of eleven or twelve years old, saw this woman, who was brought into the Fort at Mackinaw and introduced to the commanding officer; and retains a lively recollection of her appearance, and the interest and curiosity she excited. She was rather below the middle size, slight and delicate in figure, like most of the squaws;-covered with rich ornaments, silver armlets, with the scalping-knife, pouch, medals, tomahawk-all the insignia, in short, of an Indian warrior, except the war-paint and feathers. In the room hung a large mirror, in which she surveyed herself with evident admiration and delight, turning round and round before it, and laughing tri

umphantly. She was invited to dine at the officers' mess, perhaps as a joke, but conducted herself with so much intuitive propriety and decorum, that she was dismissed with all honour and respect, and with handsome presents. I could not learn what became of her afterwards.

Heroic women are not rare among the Indians, women who can bravely suffer-bravely die; but Amazonian women, female amateur warriors, are very extraordinary; I never heard but of this one in. stance. Generally, the squaws around me give me the impression of exceeding feminine delicacy and modesty, and of the most submissive gentleness. Fe. male chiefs, however, are not unknown in Indian his. tory. There was a famous Squaw Sachem, or chief, in the time of the early settlers. The present head chief of the Ottawas, a very fine old man, succeeded a female, who, it is further said, abdicated in his favour.*

Even the standing rule or custom, that women are never admitted to councils, has been evaded. At the treaty of Butte des Morts, in 1827,† an old Chippewa woman, the wife of a superannuated chief, ap. peared in place of her husband, wearing his medal, and to all intents and purposes representing him. The American commissioners treated her with studied respect and distinction, and made her rich

Major Anderson.

+ This was a treaty arranged by the American government, for settling the boundary line between the territories of the Menomonies and Chippewas, who had previously disturbed the frontiers by their mutual animosities.

presents in cloth, ornaments, tobacco, &c. On her return to her own village, she was way-laid and mur. dered by a party of Menomonies. The next year two Menomonie women were taken and put to death by the Chippewas: such is the Indian law of retaliation.

The language spoken around me is the Chippewa tongue, which, with little variation, is spoken also by the Ottawas, Pottowattomies and Missasaguas, and diffused all over the country of the lakes, and through a population of about seventy thousand. It is in these countries what the French is in Europe, the language of trade and diplomacy, understood and spoken by those tribes with whom it is not vernacu. lar. In this language Mrs. Schoolcraft generally speaks to her children and Indian domestics. It is not only very sweet and musical to the ear, with its soft inflections and lengthened vowels, but very complex and artificial in its construction, and subject to strict grammatical rules; this, for an unwritten language-for they have no alphabet-appears to me very curious. The particulars which follow I have from Mr. Schoolcraft, who has deeply studied the Chippewa language, and what he terms, not without reason, the philosophy of its syntax.

The great division of all words, and the pervading principle of the language, is the distinction into animate and inanimate objects: not only nouns, but