PAWNEE3. 15 



vate their minds and render them truly happy. If the 

 brute beast can enjoy more than the man of mind, then 

 can the savage enjoy more than the civilized man. Not 

 that the Indian has no more intellect than the brute beast. 

 They show in various ways that they have minds capable 

 of cultivation, and there is no reason why they could not 

 be as intellectual and moral and happy as any race of men. 

 To be satisfied on this point one only needs to attend a 

 council of their chiefs, especially when they meet with the 

 chiefs of other nations or with the agent of the United 

 States. They often delight to enter into a discussion in 

 relation to general principles, when they often show as 

 much of tact and art as their more cultivated oppo- 

 nents. Their minds are not cidtivated in schools or acad- 

 emies, and in some respects they are but children of a 

 larger growth. The state of their language would indicate 

 that they were a rude people living in primitive simplicity. 

 They of course have no names to apply to most of the 

 objects of civilization. In their uncultivated state they 

 seem to be remarkably dehcient in the science of numl^ers. 

 They are incapable of performing the simplest problems in 

 either of the fundamental rules of arithmetic. It is dilK- 

 cult if not impossible for them to count a large numl>er. 

 Their method of counting is easy. Instead of enumerating 

 by tens as almost all nations do, they enumerate by twen- 

 ties or as they term it by men. A man has twenty lingers 

 and toes, and hence twenty is a man, forty is two men, 

 sixty three men, and so on as tar as they can count at all. 

 They have no records, hence no history running back 

 further than the present or last generation. They have no 

 method of computing time except by days or nigldx, or 

 what is more usual, by sleeps, moons and seasons, 'i'hey 

 have only twelve names for the different moons, and every 

 year have great contention as to which moon the present 

 one is. Some of the names of the moons are derived from 

 the constellations in which they exist. In relation to them 

 there is no difficulty as to name. Others have their names 

 from some circumstances in relation to it. As in the 



