THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 65 



birds persecuted and slaughtered, by inhuman men of 

 the white race, to make food upon which to fatten vast 

 herds of hogs, and' even to extract the fat from the 

 dead bodies of the squabs, for grease with which to 

 make soap— a substance which the Indians scarcely had 

 any appreciation of. From the venerable books, the 

 Zend-Avesta, we may learn of the progress of the 

 early people of Iran. Zoroaster, the Persian sage, un- 

 folded the process, step by step, upon the ladder, as 

 they climbed to agriculture from the abyss they had 

 been in, as nomadic tribes ; and, in their metaphysics, 

 he portrayed the beneficence of the celestial izeds of 

 Hormuzd that were prototypes of our guardian angels. 

 In like manner the Greek philosophers portrayed the 

 blessings, derived from Pallas Athene, in their myth- 

 ology of metamorphism. The Red Men had their 

 sacred pigeons. 



The American Red Men held the pigeon as the 

 messenger of hope, when famine held them in a grip, 

 as malignant as that of Hobomock, their enemy, who 

 balked them in tlieir enterprises upon earth and plan- 

 ned confusion upon the long trail to the Happy Hunt- 

 ing Ground, when the Great Spirit called them from 

 their tribulations, in life upon earth, to the enjoyment 

 of their ideal conditions. The sturdy pioneers of this 

 coimtry subdued the wilderness, with privations almost 

 inconceivable at this day. They were attacked by wild 

 animals in search of food and by the Indians who dis- 

 approved of their methods ; many died from the rigors 

 of the climate; for clothing they wore the skins of 



