welfare of thy people. I have said."

The real or pretended indifference to pleasure or pain, one of the
great characteristics of the American Indian, even to the joyful manner
they would yield, without resistance and evidently without sufficient
cause, to torture and death, was owing greatly to the sudden and
unalterable decisions of their chiefs, governed by customs formed from
their views of a future state, over-ruling all earthly ambitions of
these untutored people. Such terrible dooms! The sentence and execution
so quickly following each other, and apparently falling upon the poor
victim at once, the shock paralyzing their faculties, while pride
concealing their softer feelings, transforms them so suddenly into
what appears beings indifferent and insensible to the suffering and
distress of death and separation or to the expectation of enjoyment
and happiness here on earth to themselves or others.

Thus comprehending her inevitable situation and feeling it an honor to
be the selected of the Manitou to guide the birchen-bark with precious
gifts over the precipice to the happy forest in eternity, where she
would meet her long remembered mother, the doomed maiden replied, with
tearful smile and subdued voice, "I go my father," and immediately
disappeared among the wild vines and bushes that border the banks of
Niagara, followed closely by her faithful wolf.

The setting sun that day shed its last rays and warmth upon a busy and
sorrowful scene, around thy roaring cataract, Oh, cruel unrelenting fall
of waters softly painting with mellow light the trees, rocks and thy
wild children, unmindful alike, of the sad though customary,
preparations for the sacrifice hurriedly proceeding: the women decking
with shells and flowers the fairest maiden in their tribe, so soon to