rotesque manner, according to the universal practice
of American savages. Their arms were bows and arrows, spears, and war
clubs. Some wore a corselet of pieces of hard wood laced together with
bear grass, so as to form a light coat of mail, pliant to the body; and
a kind of casque of cedar bark, leather, and bear grass, sufficient to
protect the head from an arrow or war club. A more complete article of
defensive armor was a buff jerkin or shirt of great thickness, made of
doublings of elk skin, and reaching to the feet, holes being left for
the head and arms. This was perfectly arrowproof; add to which, it was
often endowed with charmed virtues, by the spells and mystic ceremonials
of the medicine man, or conjurer.

Of the peculiar custom, prevalent among these people, of flattening
the head, we have already spoken. It is one of those instances of human
caprice, like the crippling of the feet of females in China, which
are quite incomprehensible. This custom prevails principally among the
tribes on the sea-coast, and about the lower parts of the rivers. How
far it extends along the coast we are not able to ascertain. Some of the
tribes, both north and south of the Columbia, practice it; but they all
speak the Chinook language, and probably originated from the same stock.
As far as we can learn, the remoter tribes, which speak an entirely
different language, do not flatten the head. This absurd custom
declines, also, in receding from the shores of the Pacific; few traces
of it are to be found among the tribes of the Rocky Mountains, and
after crossing the mountains it disappears altogether. Those Indians,
therefore, about the head waters of the Columbia, and in the solitary
mountain regions, who are often called Flatheads, must not be supposed
to be characterized by this deformity. It is an appellation often given
by the hunters east of the mountain chain, to all western Indians,
excepting the Snakes.

The religious belief of these people was extremely limited and confined;
or rather, in all probability, their explanations were but little
understood by their visitors. They had an idea of a benevolent and
omnipotent spirit, the creator of all things. They represent him as
assuming various shapes at pleasure, but generally that of an immense
bird. He usually inhabits the sun, but occasionally wings his way
through the aerial regions, and sees all that is doing upon earth.
Should anything displease him, he vents his wrat