appropriation of property was unknown. The "strong waters" of the
white man, the fire which hath eaten into the bowels of the race of
the red man, had not yet diffused their poison, and drunkenness was a
vice of which these people did not understand the meaning. A moral
influence over the minds of their tribe was the only distinction to
which the priests of Onondaga had aspired. This influence they sought
to attain, not by inflicting penance upon the people, but by
pretending to immediate intercourse and communication with the Great
Spirit. Reverencing that Spirit, these good sons of the forest could
not forbear to respect the channels through which his wise and
benevolent communications were made.

Not only did these priests of the Manitou direct the devotions of the
people, and convey to them the responses of the same mighty Being in
times of peril, but won their love and confidence by professing to
heal their maladies. Identified with them in their ordinary pursuits,
they were, on common occasions, distinguished from them in exterior
decoration only by a bone which they wore on the left arm, like a
bracelet, just above the wrist, and by the method of arranging their
hair. On their bracelets were carved, in rude outline, the
representations of certain beasts; and on that of the eldest of the
prophets were other cabalistic inscriptions, of which none but the
wearers themselves could penetrate the meaning. Their hair, instead of
hanging loosely over their foreheads and shoulders, as was usual with
their tribe, in common with the other red men of the forest, was
collected into a roll at the top of the head, and tied round with a
string of red wampum, its extremities being suffered to fall on either
side, as nature or accident might dispose it. When they would
intercede with the Great Spirit, or know his will by divination, they
assumed other dresses; the skins of bears or buffaloes, or mantles
curiously woven of feathers. They usually dwelt together on a sort of
consecrated ground, set apart for their special accommodation, and
which was as unlike the rest of the valley, as the valley itself was
unlike the ordinary conformation of the earth. The allotted ground, or
space set apart for their use, was called _The Prophets' Plain_, and
was situated on a projecting declivity of the western side of this
beautiful glen, whose banks, although they presented, as they opened
and widened to the north, a regular outline, were, nev