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They will hear the tidings, like the fall of a mighty oak in the stillness of the woods." No. I.

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34.

This simile is among the noblest ever conceived by orator or poet; at the same time, it could have come only from a son of the forest.

One of the most remarkable Indians, that we have any knowledge of, was Tecumthé, of whom an interesting account is given in connexion with his brother, the Prophet. This chieftain appears to have shown his superiority at a very early period of life, except on one occasion, when, being a youth of fifteen, he ran away from the enemy in battle, and brought a temporary cloud over his good name. But this did not long continue. His subsequent brilliant exploits restored him to an ascendency almost unrivalled in Indian annals. About the year 1806, he began his operations for expelling the whites from the valley of the Mississippi. He proposed a general union of all the tribes for this purpose, travelled among them with unwearied perseverance, and urged them to lay aside their petty feuds, and wage a general warfare against the common enemy. His labors in this cause, the partial success that attended them, and his final overthrow, are matters of history.

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Tecumthé maintained a very plausible theory of Indian rights, and argued stoutly against the validity of treaties, ceding lands to the whites. It was in substance, that, as the Great Spirit had given them to all the Indians for huntinggrounds, and as each tribe had a right to certain tracts of country while they occupied them and no longer, so that one might take possession when another moved away, tribe had a right to alienate that of which they had only a temporary possession; and, consequently, treaties made without the consent of all the tribes were void. These propositions he maintained with no little ingenuity and power. On one occasion, ridiculing the idea of selling a country, he exclaimed, "Sell a country! why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?"

The following anecdote is told of Waa-pa-shaw, a Sioux chief. A quarrel took place between the Winnebago Indians and the inhabitants of a little village at Prairie du Chien, during the last war. The villagers immediately claimed the interposition of this chief, on account of his in

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fluence, not only over his own tribe, but among his neighbours. He responded to the request, and went immediately to the village, with but one attendant. Seeing him approach without his customary train of warriors, the villagers gave up all for lost. In reply to their expressions of alarm, he said nothing, but sent a message by his attendant, requiring the Winnebagos to meet him at an appointed time and place that day. The Winnebagos obeyed, and Waapashaw took his place among them. After a few minutes silence, he arose, assumed an attitude of great dignity, and gazed upon the chiefs with a threatening look. He plucked a hair from his head, held it up before them, and said, "Winnebagos! do you see this hair? Look at it. You threaten to massacre the white people at the Prairie. They are your friends and mine. You wish to drink their blood. Is that your purpose? Dare to lay a finger upon one of them, and I will blow you from the face of the earth, as I now blow this hair with my breath, where none can find it." Having uttered this bold defiance, he turned upon his heel and left the council, without waiting for a reply. Nothing more was heard of Winnebago hostilities.

Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee Alphabet, is a most interesting personage, but would be still more so, were he a full-blooded Indian. He is the son of a white man and a half-breed woman, and this circumstance essentially detracts from the wonderful character of his discoveries in arts and

letters. Still, his story is a pleasant one. Instead of joining the rude sports of Indian boys, while a child, he took great delight in exercising his ingenuity by various mechanical labors. He also assisted in the management of his mother's property, consisting of a farm, and cattle, and horses. In his intercourse with the whites, he became aware that they possessed an art, by which a name, impressed upon a hard substance, might be understood at a glance, by any one acquainted with the art. He requested an educated half-blood, named Charles Hicks, to write his name; which being done, he made a die, containing a fac-simile of the word, which he stamped upon all the articles fabricated by his mechanical ingenuity. From this he proceeded to the art of drawing, in which he made rapid progress, before he had an opportunity of seeing a picture or engraving. These accomplishments made the

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young man very popular among his associates, and particularly among the red ladies; but it was long before incessant adulation produced any evil effect upon his character. length, however, he was prevailed upon to join his companions, and share in the carouse, which had been supplied by his own industry. But he soon wearied of an idle and dissipated life, suddenly resolved to give up drinking, and learned the trade of a blacksmith by his own unaided efforts. In the year 1820, while on a visit to some friends in a Cherokee village, he listened to a conversation on the art of writing, which seems always to have been the subject of great curiosity among the Indians. Sequoyah remarked, that he did not regard the art as so very extraordinary, and believed he could invent a plan by which the red man might do the same thing. The company were incredulous; but the matter had long been the subject of his reflections, and he had come to the conclusion, that letters represented words or ideas, and being always uniform, would always convey the same meaning. His first plan was to invent signs for words; but upon trial he was speedily satisfied, that this would be too cumbrous and laborious, and soon conceived the plan of an alphabet, which should represent sounds, each character standing for a syllable. He persevered in carrying out this invention, and attained his object by forming eighty-six characters.

While thus employed, he incurred the ridicule of his neighbours, and was entreated to desist by his friends. The invention, however, was completely successful, and the Cherokee dialect is now a written language; a result entirely due to the extraordinary genius of Sequoyah. After teaching many to read and write, he left the Cherokee nation in 1822, on a visit to Arkansas, and introduced the art among the Cherokees who had emigrated to that country; and, after his return home, a correspondence was opened, in the Cherokee language, between the two branches of the nation. In the autumn of 1823, the general council bestowed on him a silver medal in honor of his genius, and as an expression of gratitude for his eminent public services. This extraordinary man is now with his countrymen west of the Mississippi. Whether he continues to cultivate aboriginal literature, we have not heard. It is to be hoped, the first attempts at Indian epistolary writing, in an Indian language with Indian

characters, will not be lost. They would be objects of great curiosity to philologists.

It would be easy to go on collecting interesting anecdotes and traits from these well executed volumes, but perhaps we have already given enough to excite the attention of our readers to the work itself. The portraits are a noble monument of skill and art, and a most becoming tribute to the memory of the departing tribes. Their lineaments ought to be thus preserved from oblivion, so that, if the time should come, when the red men are only known by tradition and history, their successors may be able to form a lively idea of the races, with whom the first settlers had to contend for the soil of America.

In closing our remarks, we cannot refrain from expressing our unfeigned thanks, as Americans, to the authors and conductors of this great enterprise; second only to that of Audubon. It is a work in every respect honorable to the nation. As both the design, and the execution thus far, have merited the applause of the public, so we heartily wish it success to the end. We are glad to learn, moreover, that its circulation is not confined to one hemisphere, and that it is already attracting the attention of the curious and the enlightened in various parts of Europe. Under the energetic management of Mr. James M. Campbell, the publisher in England, a large edition is sold in that country. As a proof of the patronage it receives, it is enough to state, that the entire work, the plates, coloring, and letter-press, are executed anew in London for the British market, and that there is encouragement for an extensive sale on the continent.

ART. VI. National Standard of Costumes. A Lecture on the Changes of Fashion, delivered before the Portsmouth Lyceum, by CHARLES W. BREWSTER. mouth. 1837. 8vo. pp. 15.

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THE subject of costumes is curious and interesting. Dress is an object of universal attention. It occupies no small portion of our time and thoughts; it forms a distinct and important trade, or, we should be more inclined to call it, profes

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sion; it constitutes a very large branch of commerce. should be somewhat at a loss to determine whether civilized or barbarous nations are most occupied by the cares of the toilet. Certainly a full-dressed savage makes a wonderful display of art. His painted countenance and head, the nicely adjusted colors, the tortured hair, the elaborate ornaments, the pouch and moccasin skilfully embroidered with variegated porcupine's quills, the cloak of gorgeous feathers or cloth of bark, indicate plainly, that his attention has been directed with no little patience and contrivance to this all-important object. And we doubt not, that as much care is expended upon his toilet, as the votary of civilized fashion gives to his.

We should be almost afraid to compute how large a portion of the time among civilized people is occupied, either in dressing, or in thinking about dress. Much less, probably, is so used in this country, than in others, where a stricter etiquette prevails; but we still think we are within bounds in supposing, that one third of the waking hours of the community, including what is employed in making and repairing, is devoted to the subject of dress.

Half-civilized nations, who show more sense in their costumes than any others barbarous or refined, must, we imagine, be somewhat at a loss to account for their neighbours' bestowing so much attention upon a subject, which for them is entirely settled. Where a man, or still more a wornan, knows what colors and what forms of dress she is to use, being the same precisely that her ancestors have worn for centuries, and where the idea of fashion never dawned, there can be but little time wasted upon dress. We only wonder, what the fair inhabitants of such a country can find to supply the place of that deep interest, which the subject affords to the happier heirs of civilization. "What a monstrous idea!" we fancy some of our fair readers to exclaim; "a country where there is no such thing as fashion! where one must dress like one's grandmother; where there is no difference between morning and evening dresses; where there are no such things as walking dresses and carriage dresses, no distinctions of bonnets, and no change of forms! What becomes of the spirit of a woman in such a stupid country?"

What, then, are the causes of these differences in different countries? Why do the Persians at this day, dress as the Persians did in the days of Cyrus the Great, while the forms

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