ing
the terrible massacre, which might have happened, with so great a wrong
to provoke the hostility of the poor Indians, I am about to tell you
how the town was saved, and how the doctor outwitted them. If you pause
here, and guess, I think you will be far from the mark in reaching the
shrewdness of the surgeon, who had not been bred among the hills of old
Vermont for nothing.

As I said, at Auburn there is a State prison, and when the convicts
die, their bodies, unless claimed by relatives or friends within
twenty-four hours after death, are at the disposal of the surgeon for
dissection.

As good luck would have it, a negro convict died at the time of our
story; and the doctor conceived the idea of getting out of his
difficulty by transferring the dead body of the negro Jim to the
despoiled empty grave of Onondaga! This done, he easily persuaded the
Indians to go back and find the body of their chief all right: and so
he succeeded in humbugging the weak-minded Indians, while the bones of
old Onondaga were duly prepared and hung up to show students how
Indians and all men are made of bone and muscle. The doctor thought he
had done a good thing; but when I went into the office and saw the
horrid skull grinning at me, I was thankful that the spirit of old
Onondaga could not say of me, "You did it!"

II.

The most notable of the chiefs belonging to the Six Nations were
Hiawatha, Thayendanega (or Brant, his English name), Sagoyewatha, or
Red Jacket,--the most intelligent of the chiefs, and who is said to
have been the uncle of General Parker, a full-blood Chippewa, and at
one time Indian Commissioner at Washington. (Parker served as an aide
of General Grant during the war. In early life, he was a pupil at the
normal school, in Albany; and was reckoned quite a proficient in music
by Prof. Bowen.)

Most of these tribes, inhabiting the country bordering on the Mohawk
River, Onondaga Lake, Skaneateles, Owasco, Cayuga, Seneca, Ontario, and
Erie, migrated at an early day to Green Bay, and to the Straits of
Mackinaw. As remnants of the Onondagas were passing through Auburn,
they often slept on the floor of our kitchen, and they never stole
anything or did us any harm. One day, they were passing the American
Hotel, and, as usual, begged a few sixpences of all they met. A
gentleman sitting on the porch said to one of them, "No, you'll spend
it for whisky."

"Oh, no," he replied; "_give it to my wife,--he's a Methodist wo