The league of the Iroquois and other legends : from the Indian muse

NOTES. 307
Christianized man ;
or that in some of the rarest traits in human character, he
has passed quite beyond him." League of the Iroquois, p. 181.
Mrs. Schoolcraft says
:
" I have seen among them instances of refined delicacy
of feeling, and traits of kindness of heart diffusing itself through the action
aud manners, which I have in vain sought in highly civilized communities. I
have heard speeches which, had they been made by the sages of antiquity, would
have been handed down to us with a world's applause ;
and I have asked myself,
where is the intrinsic difference between the soul of this red man in his blauket,
and that of him who is surrounded by all the accidents of education, civilization
and manners ; are not those noble sentiments the f eeling of the good, the great
and the beautiful intuitive? " Unpublished Xotes.
Note 31. "On her his tottering footsteps leant." Page 81.
As an instance of filial affection manifested toward parents, Mr. Schoolcraft
gives the story of an aged chief, who resided at Michilimaciuac.
" He lived to be very old, aud became so feeble at last that he could not travel
by land, when spring came on and his people prepared to move their lodge from
the sugar-camp in the forest, to the open lake shore. * * It was his last winter
on earth, his heart was gladdened once more by feeling the genial rays of spring,
and he desired to go with them to behold, for the last time, the expanded lake, and
inhale its pure breezes. He must needs be carried by hand. This act of piety
was performed by his daughter, then a young woman. She carried him on her
back from the camp to the lake shore, where they erected their lodge and passed
their spring, and where he eventually died and was buried."
Note 32. "In royal mantle rich arrayed." Page 88.
" War shirts, war coats, and mantles for use on ceremonial occasions, are often
made from the skins of the fiercest and most renowned animals captured in the
chase. * "-They are elaborately wrought and profusely ornamented. * At the treaty
at Prairie-du-Chien, on the Upper Mississippi, in 1825, a great variety of these
dresses were exhibited. None, however, exceeded in its majestic style, the robe
of a Yonkton chief, from the Minnesota river, who was called Wo-ni-ta. * * He
was clothed in a war-robe of buff-colored buffalo-skin, ornamented with porcupine
quills, brilliantly dyed. This garment reached to his feet."
H. K. SCHOOLCKAFT, Vol. III. p. 67.
Note 33. " What wonder he, though calm and wise, Page 90.
Should feel the round world dance and swim,
\V!'ii on In HI, bent those love-full eyes
That more than greeting welcomed him "
.'
It has been asserted by some writers that love among the North American Indians
had no higher expression, between the sexes, than that of animal passion.
While it may be said, with truth, perhaps, that this was its more usual manifestation,
their legends very clearly disprove the assumption that the Indian was never
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