Areskoui; the
Iroquois, by a slight deviation, Agreskoui. Other nations have adopted
other names.

(8) _He went to the woman, laid his hand on her, and wept_.--p. 14.

Being then out of all hopes of surprising their enemies, three or four
of the eldest of them laid their hands on my head, and began to weep
bitterly, accompanying their tears with such mournful accents as can
hardly be expressed; while I, with a very sorry handkerchief I had left,
made shift to dry up their tears; to very little purpose however, for,
refusing to smoke in our calumet, they thereby gave us to understand
that their design was still to murder us. (_Hennepin's Voyage_, printed
in Transactions of American Ant. Soc. Vol. I. page 83, and see page 85
of the same vol.)

This "imposition of hands," accompanied with tears, was for the purpose
of exciting compassion for the recent loss of their relations in
conflict, and thus procuring revenge.

I am by no means certain that the above is a correct explanation of the
practice, though, in the tale or tradition in which I have introduced
it, I have considered it so. Tonti, in his relation of De La Salle's
Expedition, supposes it to arise from a more subdued feeling. The
passage, as the reader will see, is replete with poetical beauty. His
words are--"We arrived in the midst of a very extraordinary nation,
called the _Biscatonges_, to whom we gave the name of weepers, in regard
that upon the first approach of strangers, all these people, as well men
as women, usually fall a-weeping bitterly: the reason of this practice
is very particular; for these poor people imagining that their relations
or friends deceased are gone a journey, and continually expecting their
return, the remembrance of 'em is renewed upon the arrival of new
passengers; but forasmuch as they do not find in their persons those
whose loss they lament, it only serves to increase their grief. That
which is yet more remarkable, and perhaps even very reasonable, is that
they weep much more at the birth of their children than at their death,
because the latter is esteemed only by 'em, as it were a journey or
voyage, from whence they may return after the expiration of a certain
time, but they look upon their nativity as an inlet into an ocean of
dangers and misfortunes."

(9) _A great man whose head nearly reached the sky._--p. 26.

The God of the Indians has always a corporeal form, and is generally of
immense stature. He is chiefly repr