Before the presents were delivered, the chief of the great Pawnees decorated himself in a singular head dress of turkey feathers, so stuck in the ridge of a long slip of wampum as to form a crown round his brows, and a large oval down his back, which it almost completely covered. An elderly chief, of the Missouri tribe, who proved to be the husband of the squaw, followed his example, and substituted his native head dress for that which had been given him. This consisted of a profusion of horse-hair, stained, of a bright scarlet, and surmounted (risum teneatis ?) with two polished taper horns, as long as those of an ox. There was, however, I assure you, nothing in the looks or demeanour of his spouse to justify the wicked ideas which this illomened ornament suggested.

After the conference was at an end, they partook of wine, cake and other refreshments, of which they were no wise sparing; and then, lighting their pipes, offered them to the president, chief justice, and others, to take a whiff, in token of peace and amity.

It is impossible to see these people, and believe, as I do, that they are destined, in no very long lapse of time, to disappear from the face of the earth, without feeling for them great interest. With some vices and much grossness, they possess many fine traits of character; and we never can forget that they were the native lords of that soil, which they are gradually yielding to their invaders. Yes, I firmly believe that all our liberal and humane attempts to civilize them will prove hopeless and unavailing. Whether it is that they acquire our bad habits before our good ones, or that their course of life has, by its long continuance, so modified the nature of their race that it cannot thrive under the restraints of civilization, I know not; but it is certain, that all the tribes which have remained among us, have gradually dwindled to insignificance or become entirely extinct. You know that every experiment to rear the young wild duck has failed, and that they die as certainly by your kindness, as your neglect. It may be so with them. Considering the race to be thus transient, I have often wished that more pains were bestowed, and by more

us.

competent persons, in recording what is most remarkable and peculiar among them, now that these peculiarities are fresh and unchanged by their connection with And I am sorry that I have not been able to give you a more faithful picture of a scene which, I believe, above all others, is calculated to shew them to the best advantage. I am sure I have given you but a faint idea of the very lively gratification it afforded.

XII. SARAH BISHOP.

[Connecticut Mirror. Hartford.]

THE following lines are founded upon the history of Sarah Bishop, a hermitess, who lived 25 years in the clift of a rock, on the mountain which forms the boundary between this state, and that of New-York. She used often to visit the adjacent villages, but had little intercourse with the inhabitants. Her name, and some obscure hints of the occasion of her misfortunes, were all that could be gathered from her, respecting her earlier life. She was found dead on the mountain about fifteen years ago, standing erect, her feet somewhat pressed into the mire. The following lines are believed to convey a correct representation of her in the main; for the appearance of the grey stranger at the end of the story, however, I will not vouch.

FOR many a year the mountain hag

Was a theme of village wonder,

For she lived in a cave of the dizzy crag,
Where the eagle bore his plunder.

Up the beetling cliff she was seen at night,
Like a ghost to glide away;

And she came again with the morning light,

From the forest wild and grey.

And when winter came with its shrieking blast,

Old Sarah no more was seen,

'Till the snow wreath away from the mountain passed,

And the forests were waving in green

Her face was wrinkled, but, passionless, seemed

As her bosom were withered and dead,
And her colourless eye, like an icicle gleamed,
But no sorrow or sympathy shed.

Her long snowy locks like the winter drift,
On the wind were backward cast-

And her crippled form glided by so swift,
You had said, 'twere a ghost that passed.

And her house was a cave in a giddy rock,

That o'erhung a sullen vale-

And 'twas deeply scarred by the lightning's shock, And swept by the vengeful gale.

As alone on the cliff she musingly sate,

The fox at her fingers would snap-

The raven would sit on her snow-white pate,
And the rattlesnake coil in her lap.

And the vulture looked down with a welcoming eye
As he stooped in his airy swing—

And the haughty eagle hovered so nigh,

As to fan her long locks with his wing.

But when winter rolled dark its sullen wave

From the west with gusty shock

Old Sarah, deserted, crept cold to her cave,
And slept without bed in her rock.

No fire illumined her dismal den,
Yet a tattered bible she read,

For she saw in the dark with a wizzard ken,

And talked with the troubled dead.

And 'twas said that she muttered a foreign name,
With curses too fearful to tell;

And a tale of perfidy--madness-and shame,
She told to the walls of her cell.

Years-years passed away, and a stranger came
To the village, with age all white-

He gloomily listened to tales of the dame,

And went to her desolate height.

He saw her she stood on the jutting cliff,

Her hair on the wild wind's breath

Yet a statue she seemed, for her limbs were stiff,

And pale in the palsy of death.

Like a desolate ruin she stood on the brink,
With a writhed lip and glaring eye-

And her cold clay, with horror, seemed to shrink,
As the stranger came shuddering nigh.

He approached--but the hurrying gust swept on,
And bore her away from his sight-

And high on the crag, the wild eagle, alone,
Attended her funeral rite.

XIII. THE FALL OF TECUMSEH.

[Statesman. New-York.]

THIS highly intellectual savage, appropriately styled 66 king of the woods," was no less distinguished for his acts of humanity than heroism. He fell in the bloody charge at Moravian town, during the late war.

WHAT heavy-hoofed coursers the wilderness roam,
To the war blast indignantly tramping,

Their mouths are all white, as if frosted with foam,
The steel-bit impatiently champing?

'Tis the hand of the mighty that grasps the rein,
Conducting the free and the fearless-

Ah! see them rush forward with wild disdain,
Through paths unfrequented and cheerless,
Free the mountains had echoed the charge of death,
Announcing that chivalrous sally,

The savage was heard with untrembling breath,
To pour his response from the valley.

One moment and nought but the bugle was heard,
And nought but the war-whoop given-

The next-and the sky seemed convulsively stirred,
As if by the lightning riven.

The din of the steed--and the sabred stroke,
The blood-stifled gasp of the dying,

Were screen'd by the curling sulphur-smoke,
That upward went wildly flying.

Mid the mist that hung over the field of blood,
The chief of the horsemen contended,
His rowells were bathed in the purple flood,
That fast from his charger descended.

L

That steed reeled and fell in the van of the fight,
But the rider repressed not his daring,

'Till met by a savage, whose rank and might,
Borrowed proof from the plume he was wearing.

The moment was fearful-a mightier foe,

Had ne'er swung the battle-axe o'er him--
But hope nerved his arm for a desperate blow,
And Tecumseh fell prostrate before him.

'Tis done--the fierce onset of strife subsides,
The thunder of tumult that causes,

And victory's heraid exultingly rides,
To tell that the massacre pauses.

O ne'er may the nations again be curst,
With conflict so dark and appalling,
Foe grappled with foe till the life-blood burst,
From their agonized bosoms in falling.
Gloom, silence and solitude, rest on the spot,
Where the hopes of the red man perished,
But the fame of the hero, who fell, shall not,
By the virtuous, cease to be cherished.

He fought in defence of his kindred and king,
With a spirit most loving and loyal,
And long shall the Indian warrior sing,
The deeds of Tecumseh, the royal.

The lightning of intellect flashed from his eye,
In his arm, slept the force of the thunder,
But the bolt passed the suppliant harmlessly by,
And left the freed captive to wonder.

Above, near the path of the pilgrim, he sleeps,
With a rudely-built tumulus o'er him,

And the bright-bosomed Thames, in its majesty, sweeps
By the mound where his followers bore him.

XIV. GEEHALF. AN INDIAN LAMENT.
[Statesman. N. Y.]

THE blackbird is singing on Michigan's shore,
As sweetly and gaily as ever before;

For he knows to his mate he at pleasure can hie-
And the dear little brood she is teaching to fly.

The sun looks as ruddy, and rises as bright,

And reflects o'er our mountains as beamy a light,

As it ever reflected, or ever expressed,

When my skies were the bluest--my dreams were the best. The fox and the panther, both beasts of the night,

Retire to their dens on the gleaming of light,

And they spring with a free and a sorrowless track,

For they know that their mates are expecting them back. Each bird and each beast-it is blest in degree,

All nature is cheerful-all happy, but me.

I will go to my tent and lie down in despair-
I will paint me with black, and will sever my hair;
I will sit on the shore, where the hurricane blows,
And reveal to the god of the tempest my woes ;
I will weep for a season, on bitterness fed,
For my kindred are gone to the hills of the dead;
But they died not by hunger, or lingering decay;
The steel of the white man hath swept them away.