SOURCE OP ST. Peter's rivek. 255 



stranger. We are told that the Indians on the Canada 

 coast received Jacques Cartier by " feeling him and rub- 

 bing his arms and breast, with their hands, according to 

 their custom of caressing."* And again a chief " desired 

 the captain to give him his arms that he might kiss and 

 touch them, as is their practice of welcoming in the said 

 land."t The practice of rubbing down the limbs of the 

 stranger was, probably, first introduced for the purpose of 

 relieving him from his fatigue, at least we infer it from the 

 words of Father Hennepin, who says, " At the entry of the 

 Captain's Cabin, who had adopted me, one of the Barba- 

 rians, who seem'd to be very old, presented me with a great 

 Pipe to smoak, and weeping over me all the while with 

 abundance of Tears, rubb'd both my Arms and my Head. 

 This was to show how concern'd he was to see me so ha- 

 rass'd and fatigu'd : And indeed I had often need enough of 

 two Men to support me when I was up, or raise me when 

 I was down. There was a Bears-Skin before the Fire, 

 upon which the youngest Boy of the Cabin caus'd me to 

 lie down, and then with the Grease of Wild Cats anointed 

 my Thighs, Legs, and Soles of my Feet." J This treatment 

 was among the Dacotas. 



Alvar Nunez also observes, that the rubbing of the body 

 was a mode of salutation with many nations, about and 

 west of the mouth of the Mississippi, and indeed at a great 

 distance in-land. In the account of the first expedition to 

 Virginia in 1584, the narrator expresses himself thus; Gran- 



* Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, a Paris, 1618. p. 254. 

 t Idem, ibid, p. 302. 



i; A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America, by L. Hennepin. 

 London, 1698, p. 210. 



