1625-1750.] ENGLISH FUK-TKADERS. 79 



hair fringes. His dwelling, if he had one, was a 

 wigwam. He lounged on a bear-skin while his 

 squaw boiled his venison and lighted his pipe. In 

 hunting, in dancing, in singing, in taking a scalp, 

 he rivalled the genuine Indian. His mind was 

 tinctured with the superstitions of the forest. He 

 had faith in the magic drum of the conjuror; he 

 was not sure that a thunder cloud could not be 

 frightened away by whistling at it through the wing 

 bone of an eagle ; he carried the tail of a rattle- 

 snake in his bullet pouch by way of amulet ; and 

 he placed implicit trust in his dreams. This class 

 of men is not yet extinct. In the cheerless wilds 

 beyond the northern lakes, or among the mountain 

 solitudes of the distant w^est, they may still be 

 found, unchanged in life and character since the 

 day when Louis the Great claimed sovereignty over 

 this desert empire. 



The borders of the English colonies displayed 

 no such phenomena of mingling races ; for here a 

 thorny and impracticable barrier divided the white 

 man from the red. The English fur-traders, and 

 the rude men in their employ, showed it is true 

 an ample alacrity to fling off the restraints of civil- 

 ization ; but though they became barbarians, they 

 did not become Indians ; and scorn on the one side 

 and hatred on the other still marked the intercourse 

 of the hostile races. With the settlers of the 

 frontier it was much the same. Rude, fierce and 

 contemptuous, they daily encroached upon the 

 hunting-grounds of the Indians, and then paid them 

 for the injury with curses and threats. Thus the 



