the person of a child. All the friends assemble at the cabin of the most ancient branch of the family, without respect to nearness of kindred, and there dance and enjoy a feast of great profusion and extent. After this festival all the friends of this party retire, except four of the oldest of each side, who require the couple to stand on a mat, and there attend a discourse on conjugal affection, and the charms of a chaste and honest mind. On which the lovers break a sinall stick in pieces, and give the fragments to their friends, who keep them as evidence of the marriage, which caunot, while the stick can be put together, be denied. This ceremony is followed by inviting the nation to dance, sing, and amuse themselves, till a late hour. The wedding over, the bride is conducted to her parents' home, where she is visited by her husband till she bears a child: and if that event do not take place in the ordinary course of time, the parents assemble, collect the bits of broken sticks, see that they fit together, and then dissolve the marriage, by committing the testimony to the flames. Independent of this cause of dissolution, both men and women are permitted to separate at any time they think proper, giving eight days notice, in order that the bits of sticks may be collected and consumed. It is worthy of remark, that these kind of separations are attended with no sort of dispute, quarrel, or contradiction what

ever.

The women are at liberty, as well as the men, to re-marry whom they may think proper, but in general they seldom enter into a second engagement till after the expiration of three or six months. On separation the children are equally divided: if the number be odd, the wife is allowed one more than the husband.

"Notwithstanding this facility to change, I learn from Adario that advantage is seldom taken of itin his nation not once in ten years. And an inviolate fidelity is maintained on both sides during marriage. As soon as a wife is announced in a state of pregnancy, the matrimonial rights are suspended, and continency preserved with a religious and mystical scrupularity till nine weeks after the accouchment. When a woman is on the eve of that event, she retires to a private cabin, from which men are excluded, and delivers herself without any assistance whatever. She remains there, attended by a few female relatives, while undergoing a purification, which lasts thirty days for a girl, and continues forty for a boy; after which she returns to the cabin of her husband. The poor child no sooner appears in the world than it is plunged into moderately warm water, then bandaged gently to a plank lined with cotton, and on which it is carried with great ease from place to place; or suspended from trees in the open air. The women always nurse their own children.

That mother would be lapidated by them as a monster, who would separate herself from her new-born child. When mothers lose their children before they are weaned, they have recourse to a very affecting and melancholy expedient; they search the woods for some young opossum, kangaroo, or other wild beast, and rear it with their milk with the utmost care and tenderness.

"The husband or wife dying, the widowhood continues six months. Mourning is not in use. In a single state, the Shawanese are susceptible of jealousy; in a married one they are ignorant of that passion; the men conceiving that no person could be found sufficiently infamous to injure his neighbour's honor, and the women would suffer death sooner than inflict on their husbands so flagitious a wound. A married woman made this beautiful reply to a person who met her in the woods, and implored her to love and look upon him: "Oulamar, who is for ever before my eyes, hinders me from seeing you or any other person.

"The children always take the name of the mother. On asking Adario the reason, he replied, that, as the child received its substance from the mother, it was but reasonable it should transmit her name to posterity, and be a recompence for attentions and trouble.

"When a woman loses her husband, if he have left any brothers, it is expected that she should

marry one of them after the customary period of widowhood; and when a wife dies and leaves any sisters, it is understood that the husband should marry one.

'Among the Shawanese there are a few who observe celibacy. They are treated with great consideration:-I could not learn why. Idiots are also treated with great respect. Of the motive of this I am also ignorant. I have remarked that when once a single woman bears a child, she can never after get married; and I should have added, that, though many take drugs to prevent this misfortune, there are many who prefer pregnancy, which entitled them to lead without reproach a future life of freedom and dissipation. This class of women are called, Tekoue ne Keoussa, nymphs of the woods, because they are addicted to hunting, and associate with the men in all the perils and hardships of the chase. The parents never restrain them from this conduct: on the contrary, ́ they appear to approve of it, saying their daughters are mistresses of their own persons,-that they have a right to dispose of them, and to act as they think proper. The children are reckoned legitimate, and enjoy all the privileges of those born in wedlock, with this difference, that the chiefs and elders of council are not allowed to make them their heirs, nor are they suffered to intermarry into certain families, remarkable in the nation for military valour or political wisdom."

MISSISSIPPI.-In Major Pike's exploratory Travels through the Western Territories of North America, on the River Mississippi, near Clear River, he visited the lodge of one of the Indians of that tribe, called Fols Avoin, who treated him very hospitably, and, after he had been regaled with elk-soup, and had taken a walk round the other lodges contiguous, a good birth was provided for each of Mr. Pike's party, of good soft bear-skins, nicely spread, and for the Major was placed a large feather pillow. The major then proceeds: :

"I must not here omit an anecdote, which serves to characterise more particularly the manners of the people. This, in the eyes of the contracted moralist, would deform my hospitable host into a monster of libertinism, but a liberal mind would consider it as arising from the generosity of the wild savage. In the course of the day, observing a ring on one of my fingers, he enquired if it was gold? he was told it was the gift of one with whom I should be happy to be at that time. He seemed to think seriously, and at night told my interpreter, "that perhaps his father (as they called me) felt much grieved for want of a woman; if so, he could furnish him with one." He answered, that with us each man had but one wife, and that I considered it strictly my duty to remain faithful to her. This he thought strange, and replied, "that he