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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 the}?- 
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 verbj, 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 
