was generally the representation of an animal or bird. The Indians believed that all animals had protecting spirits, and each class was supposed to be protected by the spirit of the animal it chose for its totem. Over each class was a chief, and the head of the tribe was a chief or sachem, who was usually a man, but sometimes a woman. The Indians had no written laws, but the customs and traditions of the tribe took the place of these. The religious belief of the Indians was simple. They adored a Great Spirit-some tribes had many gods-and believed in a future state. The brave were admitted to the happy hunting-grounds of the spirit world, but cowards were excluded from them. The weapons of a warrior were buried with him that he might use them in his spirit home. Their heaven lay far beyond the mountains of the setting sun. It was a land rich in game, and abounding in fertile meadows and sparkling streams. There the warrior, released from the cares and hardships of life, passed the ages of eternity in the chase; and there parting from friends, suffering, fatigue, hunger, and thirst were unknown. The Indian heard voices of spirits in the wind, and saw them in the stars. The shades of his ancestors were constantly hovering over him, stimulating him to brave deeds, and keeping fresh in his mind the duty of avenging them upon the enemies they had left behind.

The dress of the savages consisted of the skins of animals, which were prepared by smoking them. After the settlement of the colonies they added a blanket to this dress. Their garments were decorated with skins and feathers, and on special occasions they painted their faces with various bright colors. In the warm weather they wore scarcely any clothing. Their houses or wigwams were formed of poles set firmly in the ground and bent toward each other at the top. These were covered with chestnut or birch bark. Some of the tribes had large houses, often thirty feet high and over two hundred feet long, which accommodated a number of families. Some of the Indian villages were laid off regularly and were permanent; others were broken up with each migration of the tribe.

All the Indians, however, pursued a roving life, passing from point to point in search of game and the means of subsistence. Some of the tribes lived by hunting only; others added to this pursuit the cultivation of maize or Indian corn, beans, tobacco, hemp, and pumpkins. The food of the Indians was coarser and less nourishing than that of the Europeans, and they were consequently inferior to the latter in bodily strength. They surpassed them in endurance, however, and could bear tests which the whites could not. They were swift runners, and could accomplish long distances in this way. It was a common thing for a good runner to run seventy or eighty miles in a single day. They were thoroughly proficient in the craft of the woodsman. Sounds and sights which had no meaning to the white man were eloquent to them; and they surpassed the latter in keenness of hearing and of vision. They communicated with each other by signs or marks on rocks and trees. For money they used wampum beads; and belts made of this wampum were used to record treaties and other important events. They had no intoxicating drinks before the arrival of the whites; but used tobacco, which they smoked in pipes made of clay. They were expert marksmen with the bow until they learned the use of firearms from the whites, when they lost much of their ancient skill with this weapon.

"The most ingenious inventions

CONVERTED INDIAN WOMAN.

of the Indians," says Colonel Higginson, "were the snow-shoe and the birch canoe. The snow-shoe was made of a maple-wood frame, three or four feet long, curved and tapering, and filled in with a network of deer's hide. This network was fastened to the foot by thongs, only a light, elastic moccasin being worn. Thus the foot was supported on the surface of the snow; and an Indian could travel forty miles a day upon snowshoes, and could easily overtake the deer and moose, whose pointed hoofs cut through the crust. The peculiar pattern varied with almost every tribe, as did also that of the birch canoe. This was made of the bark of the white birch, stretched over a very light frame of white cedar. The whole bark of a birch tree was stripped off and put round the frame