The Indians of ‘North America. 89 
ics, but it is worked with peculiar marks which serve as memen- 
toes. The beads are white, and blue, and are formed out of 
clam-shells. These belts were used like the quippos or knotted 
cords of the Mexicans and Peruvians—they record facts and note 
dates and accounts. 
The knowledge of the Indian of natural history is indeed great. 
By closest observation he has rendered himself familiar with all 
kinds of plants, insects, fish, birds and animals. He knows their 
names, and peculiar properties, and the uses of the various objects 
in creation—and he delights to talk about the peculiar character- 
istics of animals, of their habitations, their food, and the best 
methods of capturing them, and he naturally condemns the waste- 
ful slaughter of the beasts of the field; and during certain seasons 
of the year observes the practice of leaving them in peace to breed 
and raise up the young, so that their increase shall be maintained. 
Before going on a bear hunt, they give several days in succes- 
sion to the celebration of the ‘‘ bear dance,’’ in which they all join 
in a song to the Bear Spirit, which they think holds somewhere an 
invisible existence, and must be consulted and conciliated, before 
they can enter upon the excursion with any prospect of success, 
unless they should conform with the strictest adherence to all.the 
details of this indispensable and sacred ceremony. 
CHARACTER. 
Their character must not be judged by the Indians of the present 
time, who have had all their nobler sentiments destroyed during a 
period of four hundred years of cruelty, oppression and injustice. 
The Indian of the present day is treacherous, ferocious and savage, 
filthy, miserable, drunken, broken-hearted and beggarly. 
Catlin says: ‘‘ By nature they are decent and modest, unassum- 
ing and inoffensive, and all history proves them to have been found 
friendly and hospitable, and this has always been their conduct on ~ 
the first approach of the white people to their villages, on all parts 
of the American continent. 
In Washington Irving’s account of the wanderings of Bonneville 
among the ‘‘ Nez-perces”’ and ‘‘ Flat-heads,’’ he says: ‘‘’They 
were friendly in their dispositions, and honest to the most scrupu- 
lous degree in their intercourse with the white men.”’ * * To 
simply call these people religious would convey but a faint idea of 
the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of 
their conduct. Their honesty is immaculate; and their purity of 
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