erement."--Lafitau, tom. ii., p. 76.

Catlin says that the tribe of Mandans raise a great deal of corn. This
is all done by the women, who make their hoes of the shoulder-blades of
the buffalo or elk, and dig the ground over instead of plowing it, which
is consequently done with a vast deal of labor.--Vol. i., p. 121.]

[Footnote 285: "Nothing so distinctly marks the uncivilized condition of
the North American Indian as his total ignorance of the art of
metallurgy. Forged iron has been in use among the inhabitants of our
hemisphere from time immemorial; for, though the process employed for
obtaining the malleability of a metal in its malleable state is very
complicated, yet M. de Marian has clearly proved that the several eras
at which writers have pretended to fix the discovery are entirely
fabulous."--_Lettres sur la Chine._

Consequently the weapons of brass and other instruments of metal found
in the dikes of Upper Canada, Florida, &c., are among the strongest
indications of the superiority of those ancient races of America who
have now entirely passed away.

"Know, then," says Cotton Mather, "that these doleful creatures are the
veriest ruins of mankind. They live in a country full of metals, but the
Indians were never owners of so much as a knife till we came among them.
Their name for an Englishman was 'knife-man.'"]

[Footnote 286: Chateaubriand, vol. i., p. 233; Charlevoix.

"The dances of the Red Indians form a singular and important feature
throughout the customs of the aborigines of the New World. In these are
typified, by signs well understood by the initiated, and, as it were, by
hieroglyphic action, their historical events, their projected enterprises,
their hunting, their ambuscades, and their battles, resembling in some
respects the Pyrrhic dances of the ancients."--Washington Irving's
_Columbus_, vol. ii., p. 122.

"In the province of Pasto, on the ridge of the Cordillera, I have seen
masked Indians, armed with rattles, performing savage dances around the
altar, while a Franciscan monk elevated the host."--Humboldt's _Nouveau
Espagne_, vol. i., p. 411.

See, also, Lafitau's Moeurs _des Sauvages Ameriquains compares aux
moeurs des premiers temps_, tom. i., p. 526. He refers to Plutarch, _in
Lycurgo_, for an account of similar Spartan dances.]

[Footnote 287: Charlevoix; Lafitau; Boucher, _Histoire du Canada_.

"The players prepare for their ruin by religious observances; they fast,
they watch