ve been
taken for different tribes, and their history and language has been
criss-crossed as if the facts had been heaped together with a pitchfork.
Mr. C. has made a bold stroke to lay the foundation of a better and
truer philological basis, which must at last prevail. It is true the
_prestige_ of respected names will rise up to oppose the new views,
which, I confess, to be sustained in their main features by my own views
and researches here on the ground and in the midst of the Indians, and
men will rise to sustain the _old_ views--the original literary mummery
and philological hocus-pocus based on the papers and letters and
blunders of Heckewelder. There was a great predisposition to admire and
overrate everything relative to Indian history and language, as detailed
by this good and sincere missionary in his retirement at Bethlehem. He
was appealed to as an oracle. This I found by an acquaintance which I
formed, in 1810, with the late amiable Dr. Wistar, while rusticating at
Bristol, on the banks of the Delaware. The confused letters which the
missionary wrote many years later, were mainly due to Dr. Wistar's
philosophical interest in the subject. They were rewritten and
thoroughly revised and systematized by the learned Mr. Duponceau, in
1816, and thus the philological system laid, which was published by the
Penn. Hist. Soc. in 1819. During the six years that has elapsed, nobody
has had the facts to examine the system. It has been now done, and I
shall be widely mistaken if this does not prove a new era in our Indian
philology.

Whatever the review does on this head, however, and admitting that it
pushes some positions to an ultra point, it will blow the impostor
Hunter sky high. His book is an utter fabrication, in which there is
scarcely a grain of truth hid in a bushel of chaff.

_Nov. 4th_. Difficulties have arisen, at this remote post, between the
citizens and the military, the latter of whom have shown a disposition
to feel power and forget right, by excluding, except with onerous
humiliations, some citizens from free access to the post-office. In a
letter of this date, the Postmaster-General (Mr. McLean) declines to
order the office to be kept out of the fort, and thus, in effect,
decides against the citizens. How very unimportant a citizen is 1000
miles from the seat of government! The national aegis is not big enough
to reach so far. The bed is too long for the covering. A man cannot wrap
himself in it. I