and of familiar intercommunication, and utterly
incomprehensible to the literal minds of mere trafficking explainers.
Even were it otherwise, the persons hovering upon the frontier most
ingenuously own, when pressed for interpretations of Indian customs,
that they care nothing for the Indians excepting to get their lands, and
that they really consider all study concerning them as egregious folly,
save only that of finding out how much cotton their grounds will yield,
and in what way the greatest speculations can be accomplished with the
smallest capital.

The last of the ceremonies of the day consisted of a sort of trial of
fortitude upon the young.

Old chiefs were seated at the back of the council-house, and of the four
houses of the square. They had sharp instruments,--sail-needles, awls,
and flints. Children of from four to twelve, and youths, and young men,
presented their limbs, and the instrument was plunged into the thighs
and the calves of the legs, and drawn down in long, straight lines. As
the blood streamed, the wounded would scoop it up with bark or sticks,
and dash it against the back of the building; and all the building thus
became clotted with gore. The glory of the exercise seemed to be to
submit without flinching, without even consciousness. The youngest
children would sometimes show the most extraordinary self-control. All
offered themselves to the experiment voluntarily. If a shudder were
detected, the old chiefs gashed deeper. But where they saw entire
firmness, an involuntary glow of admiration would flit over their stony
faces.

We now left, and went to an infant town--and a savage infant it
seemed--over the river to break our fast,--an indulgence which to our
Indian friends is not permitted. They may neither eat nor sleep until
the ceremonies close. The town we went to is named Talassee. It has but
about a dozen houses as yet, but is delightfully situated, and I should
not wonder to see a large place there in another twelvemonth. It belongs
to the region of a clan different from the one we left, though part of
the same tribe. Here the investigating agent held his court; and the
place was crowded with drunken Indians, and more uncivilized
speculators, parading about, as some had done among the spectators at
the festival, with blacked eyes and lacerated faces,--the trophies of
_civil_ war for _savage_ plunder. At the house where we dined, I found
the landlady and her family implacable Indian h