do, and that they had no other chance of redress. The result of this council was very unsatisfactory. The Indian chiefs declared that they were ashamed to look their people in the face, and walked solemnly away.

To make this matter still worse, after I left St. Peter's I read in the St. Louis Gazette a report of some Chippeways having come down, and that, in consequence of the advice given by the Indian agent, the Sioux had taken the law into their own hands and murdered some of the Chippeways; and that although they had never received redress for the murder of their own people, some of the Sioux were again taken and executed.

The arms of the Sioux are the rifle, tomahawk, and bow; they carry spears more for parade than use. Their bows are not more than three feet long, but their execution with them is surprising. A Sioux, when on horseback chasing the buffalo, will drive his arrow, which is about eighteen inches long, with such force

that the barb shall appear on the opposite side of the animal. And one of their greatest chiefs, Wanataw, has been known to kill two buffalos with one arrow, it having passed through the first of the animals, and mortally wounded the second on the other side of it. I was about two

1

hundred yards from the fort, and asked a Sioux if he could send his arrow into one of the apertures for air, which were near the foundation, and about three inches wide. It appeared like a mere thread from where we stood. He took his bow, and apparently with a most careless aim he threw the arrow right into it.

The men are tall and straight, and very finely made, with the exception of their arms, which are too small. The arms of the squaws, who do all the labour, are much more muscular. One day, as I was on the prairie, I witnessed the effect of custom upon these people. A Sioux was coming up without perceiving me; his squaw followed very heavily laden, and to assist her he had himself a large package on his

shoulder. As soon as they perceived me, he dropped his burden, and it was taken up by the squaw and added to what she had already. If a woman wishes to upbraid another, the severest thing she can say is, "You let your husband carry burthens."

CHAPTER VIII.

LEFT St. Peters. Taking the two varieties in the mass, the Indians must be acknowledged the most perfect gentlemen in America, particularly in their deportment. It was with regret that I parted with my friends in the fort, my kind host, Mr. Sibley, and my noble-minded warrior Sioux. I could have remained at St. Peters for a year with pleasure, and could only regret that life was so short, and the Mississippi so long.

There is, however, one serious drawback in all America to life in the woods, or life in cities, or every other kind of life; which is the manner,

go where you will, in which you are pestered by the musquitoes. Strangers are not the only sufferers; those who are born and die in the country are equally tormented, and it is slap,

slap, slap, all day and all night long, for these animals bite through everything less thick than a buffalo's skin. As we ascended the river they attacked us on the crown of the head-a very unusual thing,—and raised swellings as large as pigeons' eggs. I must have immolated at least five hundred of them upon my bump of benevolence. Whatever people may think, I' feel that no one can be very imaginative where these animals are so eternally tormenting them. You meditate under the shady boughs of some forest-king (slap knee, slap cheek), and farewell to anything like concentration of thought; you ponder on the sailing moon (slap again, right and left, above, below), always unpleasantly in-terrupted. It won't do at all: you are teazed and phlebotomized out of all poetry and patience.

It is midnight, the darkness is intense, not even a star in the heavens above, and the steamboat appears as if it were gliding through a current of ink, with black masses rising just perceptible on either side of it; no sound except