lence of a bombshell, and there it would | THE INHABITANTS OF THE BLACK doubtless have burrowed like the aforesaid implement of destruction had the soil been

HILLS IN 1846.
FROM "THE OREGON TRAIL.”*

CHIEF.

soft enough for the purpose, or exploded into GOVERNMENT OF THE SIOUX-POWER OF A a thousand fraginents had not the shell been double the thickness of an ordinary skull. "Huzza! Bloody Nathan for ever!" shouted the delighted villagers.

He has killed the man," said Forrester, "but bear witness, all, the fellow provoked his fate."

"Thanks to you, strannger, but not so dead as you reckon," said Ralph, rising to his feet and scratching his poll with a stare of comical confusion. I say, strannger, here's my shoulders, but whar's my head? Do you reckon I had the worst of it?"

IIE Dahcotah or Sioux range over a

THE

vast territory, from the river St. Peter to the Rocky Mountains. They are divided into several independent bands, united under no central government and acknowledging no common head. The same language, usages and superstitions form the sole bond between them. They do not unite even in their wars. The bands of the east fight the Objibwas on the Upper Lakes; those of the west make incessant war upon the Snake Indians in the Rocky Mountains. As the whole people is divided into bands, so each band is divided into villages. Each village has a chief, who is honored and obeyed only so far as his

per

Huzza for Bloody Nathan Slaughter! He has whipped the ramping tiger of Salt River," cried the young men of the station. "Well, I reckon he has," said the mag-sonal qualities may command respect and nanimous Captain Ralph, picking up his hat. fear. Sometimes he is a mere nominal chief; Then walking up to Nathan, who had taken his sometimes his authority is little short of abdog into his arms to examine into the little ani- solute and his fame and influence reach bemal's hurts, he cried with much good-humored yond his own village, so that the whole band energy, 'Thar's my fo'-paw in token I've to which he belongs is ready to acknowledge had enough of you and want no mo'. But I him as their head. This was a few years say, Nathan Slaughter," he added as he since the case with the Ogillallah. Courage, grasped the victor's hand, "it's nothing you address and enterprise may raise any warrior can boast of to be the strongest man in Ken- to the highest honor, especially if he be the tucky and the most sevagarous at a tussel, son of a former chief or a member of a nuh'yar among murdering Injuns and scalping merous family, to support him and avenge his runnegades, and keep your fists off their top- quarrels; but when he has reached the dignots. Thar's my idea; for I go for the doc- nity of chief and the old men and warriors by trine that every able-bodied man should sarve a peculiar ceremony have formally installed his country and his neighbors and fight their him, let it not be imagined that he assumes foes, and them that does is men and gentle- any of the outward signs of rank and honor. men, and them that don't is cowards and ras- He knows too well on how frail a tenure he cals that's my idea. And so fawwell." holds his station. He must conciliate his

ROBERT MONTGOMERY BIRD.

* Published by Little, Brown & Co.

uncertain subjects. Many a man in the vil- | rancorous hatred, transmitted from father to lage lives better, owns more squaws and more horses and goes better clad than he. Like the Teutonic chiefs of old, he ingratiates himself with his young men by making them presents, thereby often impoverishing himself. If he fails to gain their favor, they will set his authority at naught and may desert him at any moment; for the usages of his people have provided no means of enforcing his authority. Very seldom does it happen-at least, among these Western bands—that a chief attains to much power unless he is the head of a numerous family. Frequently the village is principally made up of his relatives and descendants, and the wandering community assumes much of the patriarchal character.

The Western Dahcotah have no fixed habitations. Hunting and fighting, they wander incessantly, through summer and winter. Some follow the herds of buffalo over the waste of prairie; others traverse the Black Hills, thronging, on horseback and on foot, through the dark gulfs and sombre gorges, and emerging at last upon the "parks," those beautiful but most perilous hunting-grounds. The buffalo supplies them with the necessaries of life with habitations, food, clothing, beds and fuel, strings for their bows, glue, thread, cordage, trail-ropes for their horses, coverings for their saddles, vessels to hold water, boats to cross streams and the means of purchasing all that they want from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away.

LOVE OF WAR.

War is the breath of their nostils. Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a

son and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation. Many times a year in every village the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are made, the war-parade is celebrated and the warriors go out by handfuls at a time against the enemy. This fierce spirit awakens their most eager aspirations and calls forth their greatest energies. It is chiefly this that saves them from lethargy and utter abasement. Without its powerful stimulus they would be like the unwarlike tribes beyond the mountains, scattered among the caves and rocks like beasts and living on roots and reptiles. These latter have little of humanity except the form, but the proud and ambitious Dahcotah warrior can sometimes boast heroic virtues. It is seldom that distinction and influence are attained among them by any other course than that of arms. Their superstition, however, sometimes gives great power to those among them who pretend to the character of magicians, and their orators-such as they are-have their share of honor.

A PATRIARCH.

One morning we were summoned to the lodge of an old man, the Nestor of his tribe. We found him half sitting, half reclining, on a pile of buffalo-robes; his long hair-jetblack, though he had seen some eighty winters-hung on either side of his thin features. His gaunt but symmetrical frame did not more clearly exhibit the wreck of bygone strength than did his dark, wasted features, still prominent and commanding, bear the stamp of mental energies. Opposite the patriarch was his nephew, the young aspirant Mahto-Tatonka, and besides these there were one or two women in the lodge.

IN

FRANCIS PARKMAN.

THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.

N this parable our Lord foreshadows his own sad death. The wicked husbandmen typify the enemies who rejected and crucified the Messiah whose mission was to give them entrance into the kingdom of life everlasting, and the son and heir is the Son of the Highest and the Prince and Heir of that kingdom. The words of the murderers in the parable-"This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours "—have their counterpart in the ings of the murderers of the divine Victim; and the treachery of those murderers—“ and they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard"-has its exemplification in the tragedy of the crucifixion.

The old man's story is peculiar and illus- | They honored his commission, and respected. trative of a superstition that prevails in full him in his novel capacity. force among many of the Indian tribes. He was one of a powerful family renowed for warlike exploits. When a very young man, he submitted to the singular rite to which most of the tribe subject themselves before entering upon life. He painted his face black; then, seeking out a cavern in a sequestered part of the Black Hills, he lay for several days fasting and praying to the spirits. In the dreams and visions produced by his weakened and excited state he fancied, like all Indians, that he saw supernatural revelations. Again and again the form of an antelope appeared before him. The antelope is the graceful peace-spirit of the Ogillallah, but seldom is it that such a gentle visitor presents itself during the initiatory fasts of their young men the terrible grizzly bear, the divinity of war, usually appears to fire them with martial ardor and thirst for renown. At length the antelope spoke. It told the young dreamer that he was not to follow the path of war, that a life of peace and tranquillity was marked out for him, that thenceforward he was to guide the people by his counsels and protect them from the evils of their own feuds and dissensions. Others were to gain renown by fighting the enemy, but greatness of a different kind was in store for him.

say

Our engraving is taken from the painting by Franklin, whose illustrations of the parables have a wide reputation.

THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE. ET men lift their vast reflectors or refractors to the skies and detect new planets in their hiding-places; let them waylay the fugitive comets in their flight and compel The visions beheld during the period of them to disclose the precise period of their this fast usually determine the whole course orbits and to give bonds for their punctual reof the dreamer's life. From that time Le turn; let them drag out reluctant satellites from Borgne-which was the only name by which "their habitual concealment;" let them resolve we knew him-abandoned all thoughts of the unresolvable nebula of Orion or Andromewar and devoted himself to the labors of da. They need not fear the sky will not fall peace. He told his vision to the people. | nor a single star be shaken from its sphere.