MAY. 155 



improvement, as nothing but stern necessity could induce 

 exertion ; and immediately their necessity was supplied, they 

 returned to the same state of inaction as before. Yet they 

 were not destitute of mechanical contrivance and ingenuity, 

 for they invented the birchen canoe, an article which has 

 elicited the approbation of all travellers. It is made of a 

 frame-work of light tough wood, over which the papery bark 

 of the birch is stretched ; the pieces being sewed together 

 with sinews, and the seams smeared with turpentine. It is 

 water-tight, and so light that a man can carry it on his head : 

 a white man would, on getting into one, tip it over : but the 

 Indians manage them with great dexterity, and sometimes 

 load them down to within an inch of the water. An Ameri- 

 can author says of the languages of these tribes, that " they 

 are like no forms of speech known in the old world. They 

 are wonderfully expressive, both defective and redundant, 

 and are said to be difficult of acquisition. The verbs of the 

 Dahcotah language appear to have no roots, and to be entirely 

 irregular in their modifications. The nominative case neither 

 precedes nor follows the verb, as in the languages of the 

 old world, but is incorporated with it ; sometimes at the end of 

 the word, sometimes in the middle, sometimes abbreviated, 

 and sometimes entire. We have known traders fail to 

 acquire it during a trial of thirty years. From the little ac- 

 quaintance we were able to gain, we thought it a collection 

 of phrases, with scarce the semblance of rule or order, and con- 

 clude that to be learned at all it must be learned by rote." 



C — Were not the red men treated with unnecessary 

 cruelty by the first settlers of North America ? 



F. — There is no doubt they were ; they were called " the 

 heathen," and were often hunted and shot down like wild 

 beasts. Some curious legends are preserved of these doings : 

 some Indians of the Norridgewock tribe, who lived on the 

 Kennebec river, near this province, were employed by some 

 traders to draw a cannon into the fort, by means of a long 



