INDIANS. 
175 
of resort to their fishing and hunting parties when the country 
was a wilderness. Now they come very seldom, and singly, or 
in families, craving permission to build a shanty of boughs or 
boards, in order to ply their trade of basket-makers. They no 
longer encamp on the island itself, for the oak by the bridge is 
almost the only tree standing on it, and they still love the woods ; 
but three out of the four families who have been here during the 
last ten years, have chosen the neighboring groves for their halt- 
ing-place. 
There are already many parts of this country where an Indian 
is never seen. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands 
of the white population who have never laid eyes upon a red 
man. But this ground lies within the former bounds of the Six 
Nations, and a remnant of the great tribes of the Iroquois still 
linger about their old haunts, and occasionally cross our path. 
The first group that we chance to see strike us strangely, appear- 
ing as they do in the midst of a civilized community with the 
characteristics of their wild race still clinofino: to them ; and when 
it is remembered that the land over which they now wander as 
strangers, in the midst of an alien race, was so lately their o^vn 
— the heritage of their fathers — it is impossible to behold them 
without a feeling of peculiar interest. 
Standing at the window, one summer’s afternoon, our attention 
was suddenly fixed by three singular figures approaching the 
house. More than one member of our household had never yet 
seen an Indian, and unaware that any were in the neighborhood, a 
second glance was necessary to convince us that these visitors must 
belong to the red race, whom we had long been so anxious to see. 
They came slowly toward the door, walking singly and silently, 
