Rocky Mountains. 371 



ing, horsemanship, and warfare, are the only avocations in 

 which their ambition or sense of honour, prompts them to 

 engage. 



Their reluctance to forgive an injury, is proverbial. *' In- 

 juries are revenged by the injured; and blood for blood is 

 always demanded, if the deceased has friends who dare to 

 retaliate upon the destroyer." Instances have occurred where 

 their revenge has become hereditary, and quarrels have been 

 settled long after the parties, immediately concerned, have 

 become extinct. 



Much has been published in relation to the high antiquity 

 of Indian traditions, of those particularly which relate to 

 their origin, and their religion. But from the examples afford- 

 ed by the several nations of Indians resident upon the Mis- 

 sissippi and its waters, but little proof is to be had in fa- 

 vour of the position. It is not doubted, that the immedi- 

 ate objects of their worship, have been held in reverence 

 by their predecessors, for a long succession of ages; but in 

 respect to any miraculous dispensations of Providence of 

 which they have a traditional knowledge, their ideas are 

 at best exceedingly vague and confused, and of occurrences 

 recorded in sacred history, they appear to be entirely igno- 

 rant. The knowledge they have of their ancestry is also very 

 limited, so much so, that they can seldom trace back their 

 pedigree more than a few generations, and then know so lit- 

 tle of the place whence their fathers came, that they can on- 

 ly express their ideas upon the subject in general terms, sta- 

 ting, that they came, " from beyond the lakes, from the ri- 

 sing or setting sun, from the north or south," &c. In some 

 instances, where their term of residence in a place has evi- 

 dently been of short duration, they have either lost, or con- 

 ceal their knowledge of the country whence their ancestors 

 came, and assert that the Master of Life created and plant- 

 ed their fathers on the spot where they, their posterity, now 

 live. They have no division of time except by years, sea- 

 sons, moons, and days. Particular periods are distinguished 

 by the growth and changes of vegetables, the migrations, in- 

 cubations, &c. of birds and other animals. 



Their language is of two kinds: viz. verbal and signal, ol 

 the language of signs. 



The former presents a few varieties marked by radical 

 differences, and a multiplicity of dialects peculiar to indivi- 

 dual tribes or nations descended from the same original. The 

 latter is a language common to most, if not to all of the west- 



