ogy and their feelings. Dr. Richardson relates that those
tribes who hold the idea that "the souls of the departed have to
scramble up a great mountain, at whose top they receive the reward of
their good or bad deeds, declare that women who have been guilty of
infanticide never reach the top of this mountain at all. They are
compelled instead to travel around the scenes of their crimes with
branches of trees tied to their legs. The melancholy sounds which are
heard in the still summer evenings, and which the ignorance of the white
people looks upon as the screams of the goat-suckers, are really,
according to my informant, the moanings of these unhappy
beings"--Franklin's _Journey to the Polar Seas_, p. 77, 78.]

CHAPTER VII.

The Indian is endowed with a far greater acuteness of sense than the
European. Despite the dazzling brightness of the long-continued snows,
and the injurious action of the smoke of burning wood to which he is
constantly exposed, he possesses extraordinary quickness of sight. He
can also hear and distinguish the faintest sounds, alike through the
gentle rustling of the forest leaves and in the roar of the storm; his
power of smell is so delicate that he scents fire long before it becomes
visible. By some peculiar instinct the Indian steers through the
trackless forests, over the vast prairies, and even across wide sheets
of water with unerring certainty. Under the gloomiest and most obscure
sky, he can follow the course of the sun[238] as if directed by a
compass. These powers would seem innate in this mysterious race; they
can scarcely be the fruit of observation or practice, for children who
have never left their native village can direct their course through
pathless solitudes as accurately as the experienced hunter.

In the early stages of social progress, when the life of man is rude and
simple, the reason is little exercised, and his wants and wishes are
limited within narrow bounds; consequently, his intellect is feebly
developed, and his emotions are few but concentrated. These conditions
were generally observable among the rudest tribes of the American
Indians.

There are, however, some very striking peculiarities in the intellectual
character of the Red Men. Without any aid from letters or education,
some of the lower mental faculties are developed in a remarkable degree.
As orators, strategists, and politicians, they have frequently exhibited
very great power.[240] They are co