122 NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 



United States. Certain it is, there are not more than half the 

 numbers, in this region, at present. The number which he 

 assigns to the Sandy Lake band is three hundred and forty -five. 



The Chippewas of the Upper Mississippi are, in fact, the ad- 

 vanced band of the wide-spread Algonquin family, who, after 

 spreading along the Atlantic from Virginia, as far as the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence, have followed up the great chain of lakes, to this 

 region, leaving tribes of more or less variation of language on the 

 way. There may have been a thousand years, or more, expended 

 on this ethnological track, and the names by which they were, at 

 various ages and places, known, are only important as being de- 

 rivatives from a generic stock of languages whose radicals are 

 readily recognized. Furthest removed, in the line of migration, 

 appear the Mohicans, Lenno Lenawpees, Susquehannocks, and 

 Powatans, and their congeners. The tribes of this continent 

 appear, indeed, to have been impelled in circles, resembling the 

 whirlwinds which have swept over its surface ; and, so far as 

 relates to the mental power which set them in motion, the com- 

 parison also holds good, for the effects of their migrations appear, 

 everywhere, to have been war and destruction. One age appears 

 to produce no wiser men than another. Having no mode of 

 recording knowledge, experience dies with the generation who 

 felt it, all except the doubtful and imprecise data of tradition ; 

 and this is little to be trusted, after a century or two. For the 

 matter of exact historj^, they might as well trace themselves to 

 the moon, as some of their mythological stories do, as to any other 

 planet, or part of a planet. Of their language, the only certainly 

 reliable thing in their history, a vocabulary is given in the Ap- 

 pendix, To the ear, it appears flowing and agreeable, and 

 not of difficult utterance ; and there is abundant reason, on be- 

 holding how readily they express themselves, for the plaudits 

 which , the early French writers bestowed on the Algonquin 

 language. 



We observed the custom of these Indians of placing their dead 

 on scaffolds. The corpse is carefully wrapped in bark, and then 

 elevated on a platform made by placing transverse pieces in forks 

 of trees, or on posts, firmly set in the ground. This custom is 

 said to have been borrowed by the Chippewas, of this quarter, 

 from the Dacotahs or Sioux. When they bury in the ground, 



