trange sound, its
meaning seize his brain as a strong man seizes and binds him who is
weak and powerless. Wondrous were the things which the fierce phantom
related to the startled warrior of the Iroquois. He spoke of the wars
of the Allegewi, and of the torrents of blood that ran into the
Michigan, and the Erie, and the Huron, and the River of the
Mountains[A], and the Naemesi Sipu, discolouring their once clear, and
cresting with red foam, their once calm and peaceful waters. He told
how the men of the Allegewi were beaten and driven no one but the
Great Being, and the Manitous, and the spirits in the Blessed Shades,
knew whither, by the ancestors of the Iroquois, who came from the far
north, across an arm of the Frozen Sea, encountered the Allegewi, the
primitive inhabitants of the soil, who were entrenched behind the
stupendous mounds which still remain, and drove them into perpetual
banishment. He described the pigmy people, and the giant tribes whose
graves and mounds might yet be seen, exciting the wonder of the
curious, and bringing men even from the City of the Rock[B] to view
them, to open them, and to put down their thoughts about them upon
the fair white skin[C]. A wild and unnatural song of triumph, in a
tone as hoarse as the croakings of the raven or the bittern, burst
from his lips, of the valiant exploits of his tribe, his own among the
number, in times long since--when the oak tree now dying with age was
a little child, and the huge rocks were within the strength of a full
grown warrior to poise. He spoke of nations whose names till then had
never reached the ears of the wondering Iroquois, and told of their
loves, and their hatreds, and their forest warfare.

[Footnote A: The Hudson.]

[Footnote B: Quebec.]

[Footnote C: The Indians could not be persuaded at first that paper
was any thing else than tanned leather.]

Then he changed the theme, and spoke of the land of souls, the bright
region to which the spirits of the good retire when the body is to be
changed to dust. He painted the pleasures which are the portion of its
inhabitants, and told in the ears of the warrior what description of
men were permitted to be received into it; what were the deeds which
pleased and conciliated the Great Being, and what the crimes which
shut the gates of the Bridge of Souls against the wanderer thither. He
painted minutely the happy land appointed for the residence of the
souls of the Iroquois--where the brave