226 EXPEDITION TO THE 



of his departed relations. According to Le Sellier,he makes 

 a difference between the soul and the spirit ; the former 

 being probably in his opinion nothing else but the princi- 

 ple of vitality ; its seat is in the heart ; all animals are gifted 

 'witli souls, as they are endowed with vitality. He believes 

 (hat the soul alone goes to the other world ; the body decays 

 after death. We observed in him, and in all the Indians 

 whom we met with, that they entertained not the least be- 

 lief of the resurrection of the body, as has been asserted of 

 them by some authors ; while they generally appeared to 

 be convinced of the immortality of the soul or spirit, and 

 of an after existence. 



The Indians are particular in their demonstrations of 

 grief for departed friends. These consist in darkening 

 their faces with charcoal, fasting,'abstaining from the use 

 of vermilion and other ornaments in dress, &c. They also 

 make incisions in their arms, legs, and other parts of the 

 body ; these are not made for the purposes of mortification, 

 or to create a pain, which shall, by dividing their attention, 

 efface the recollection of their loss, but entirely from a be- 

 lief that their grief is internal, and that the only way of 

 dispelling it is to give it a vent through which to escape. 

 Their outward signs of grief are not merely of a tempo- 

 rary kind ; they are more lasting than among those who 

 consider themselves as higher in the scale of refine- 

 ment than the red man. Wennebea observed that he had 

 abstained, for the last fifteen years, fi'om the use of vermi- 

 lion on account of the loss of a valued friend, and he meant 

 to persist in this practice for ten years longer ; the de- 

 ceased was no relation, merely a friend. Public opi- 

 nion requires of them some mourning for departed rela- 

 tions, but the Indian graduates his expressions of grief ac- 

 cording to the value in which he held the deceased, uot 



