exceeding veneration with all
the tribes of the west, especially with the Ricaras, and that whenever
they passed them, and they often deviated many miles from their path for
that purpose, they never failed to make an offering, generally of some
ornament, or valued part of their dress, or martial equipment, to
propitiate the intelligences supposed to inhabit the statues, and render
them favourable to their wants and wishes, and to their success in war,
or the chace He saw that the continued observance of this rite for a
long period, probably for ages, had collected around the "Idols" a large
heap of stones, sticks, blankets, deer-skins, eagle's' feathers, &c.,
but he had remained till now in ignorance of the tradition, which
assigned to them a past existence as human beings. He knew that every
thing which is not in the common order of things, even a tree singularly
shaped, or presenting an unusual excrescence, a blade of grass twisted
into an uncommon form, a berry or a stalk of maize growing to an unusual
size, become, in the eyes of these wild and superstitious children of
the forest, invested with supernatural interest; but he had supposed
that it was the mere resemblance which these statues bore to human
beings that had caused the Indians to regard them as objects worthy of
the most hallowed form of their rude worship.

It may be as well to say in this place, what I had contemplated making
the subject of a note. It is this--that Indian poetry always wants the
correspondence of the last sound of one verse with the last sound or
syllable of another. There cannot, I imagine, be found a single instance
of their having attempted to produce the "harmonical succession of
sounds," which has imparted so much richness and beauty to the
cultivated languages. It is necessary to state this, that my readers may
not suppose that the omission to make the lines rhyme grew out of an
attempt to give to the poetry an appearance of greater originality, and
of greater singularity and wildness, the supposed first step to success.
I could not, consistently with my determination to represent truly the
manners and customs of that interesting and hard-used race in their own
style and method, attempt to introduce rhyme into their rude lyrics. The
poetry I have given, though it may want the inspiration of Indian
poetry, will be found to possess its method. Another trait of Indian
poetry to be noticed is the frequent repetition of favourite passa