on a white man's care. It was not strange, therefore, that during the first year complaints of wants and petitions for help were constantly brought to us. The negroes are now always willing to accept a gift, but it is rare to hear a request that takes the form of beggary. After testing the possibility, they seemed to recognize the manliness of self-support, and in many instances of word and deed have shown pride in standing alone. The same feeling is tending to check dishonesty. It is no longer the only refuge from injustice, the only means of obtaining luxuries. In those circumstances, however, which are most akin to their old position, where they expect punishment or distrust promises, they still instinctively turn to their old resource; and so strongly are they united, as of old, to shield an offender, that the oath before a court of justice often proves no barrier to falsehood. Till law is recognized as the strong power in society, the righteous man fears the consequences of his own virtue, fights baseness with its own weapon, and becomes a coward before a stronger force than his own. In like manner, Cuffy, who, though a "member," is not a moral hero or martyr, tells a lie even on the Bible, rather than send his friend to jail by his evidence, and live in plantation odium for six months afterwards. In our own experience we have found few who could not usually, only one who could always, be relied on. An openeyed trust is usually a sufficient guard against cheating, though it is expedient to scrutinize all work before accepting it. With the majority it seems to be more a matter of good feeling than of principle. If they do not like you, or, which is the same thing, if they think you are taking advantage of them, they are ready to take advantage of you in self-defence; if you treat them honorably and win their confidence, they will be found to deserve yours. This latter fact leaves the bitterness of the master's charge on his own lips, and implies with every accession of knowledge an increase of manliness. Already we discern such a growth, and would each year trust them more. In the character of the more thoughtful and responsible, it is very curious at present to watch the honesty thus hardening into principle.

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Greater courage also is manifested, both that which overcomes obstacles and that which faces danger. The slavish ser

vility to the white man is fast dropping out even of the forms of courtesy. The negroes have a kind of daring which requires excitement and support from some extraneous source. Implicit faith in able officers, combined with willingness to give unthinking obedience and throw off all responsibility, fit them to display the fierce gallantry which is now unquestioned; but under officers whom they distrusted, or circumstances which involved a prolonged strain on their moral endurance, they might prove, we fear, more dangerous to friends than to enemies. The truth must be owned that the Port-Royalists have shown great apathy in sacrificing anything to secure their liberty. The real volunteers have been comparatively few. By far the larger part of the native regiments have been filled by wholesale conscription; and the conscription has been carried out by hunting, and in several instances shooting down the fugitives. The antipathy to military service began with General Hunter's attempt in 1862, the first of the war, which proved a failure only because government would not then accept the policy of enrolling black soldiers. The men were taken by his soldiers from the field, leaving the hoe standing in the unfinished row, hurried down to Hilton Head, and detained there for three months, subjected to the hostility and insults of all the white regiments, and apparently befriended by the commanding general alone. At the end of that time, those who had not already deserted were dismissed without a cent of pay. From that time the matter has been reagitated at intervals with little judgment or energy, and has kept the island families in a constant state of dread. But the late measures originated by the presence of recruiting agents from the North have proved more successful. Their large bounties have induced many to enlist, who had hitherto set the order at defiance by retreating to the woods at the first alarm. Nearly every able-bodied man is now in uniform; and the letters of those who were most reluctant to go indicate cheerful content and a soldierly pride in the service. No training could be better adapted to stamp out the past, and to lay a solid foundation for the qualities and habits of their new character, that of the free Southern laborer.

Such are the signs at Port Royal. To ourselves they give a

hope so confident, that we have had no fear in representing facts in the soberest light. Judging from the activity already shown, the improvement already made, we feel certain that the "institution" of freedom will at once be far more than selfsupporting, and that, with the paralysis of slavery fairly thrown off, the negro will eventually contribute to the strength and honor of the country in relations far more important than that of simply furnishing its cotton, sugar, and rice. Yet it is no light or short task to which our nation is approaching. Not only do their old habits cling to the freedmen as they rise, but their ignorance will betray them into new and perilous mistakes. We look for slow progress and much disappointment. Emancipation from slavery is a convulsion in the moral and social being of a race. The very conditions of existence are changed; principles once powerful are subverted and disappear, and new ones take their place. For a time discouragement and failure await the eager restorer. Let no one expect, then, as he glances at Port Royal, to find that every prospect pleases. It is a waste place occupied by a bewildered people. We only claim at present that nature has begun its adoption,— that the long disinherited are showing proof that manhood is their rightful possession.

ART. II. Relations des Jésuites contenant ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable dans les Missions des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus dans la Nouvelle France. Ouvrage publié sous les Auspices du Gouvernement Canadien. Quebec. 1858. 3 vols. 8vo.

WE place at the head of this article the name of the above work, or rather collection of many works, because, in respect to the early Indian tribes, the Relations of the Jesuits are by far the most full and trustworthy authority. With the aid of these and the other writers, old and recent, who have entered or touched upon the subject, we propose to examine the primitive condition of these communities, choosing the period between

the years 1620 and 1640, and limiting our inquiry in the main to tribes in Canada and the northern section of the United States. Among these were to be found the most distinctive and striking examples of Indian political and social organization; and our sources of information concerning them are clear and copious.

America, when it became known to Europeans, was, as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution. In North and South, tribe was giving place to tribe, language to language; for the Indian, hopelessly unchanging as respects individual and social development, was, as respects tribal relations and local haunts, mutable as the wind. In Canada and the northern section of the United States, the elements of change were especially active. The Indian population which, in 1635, Cartier found at Montreal and Quebec, had disappeared at the opening of the next century, and another race had succeeded, of language and customs widely different; while in the region now forming the State of New York a power was rising to a ferocious vitality which, but for the presence of Europeans, would probably have subjected, absorbed, or exterminated every other Indian community east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio.

The vast tract of wilderness from the Mississippi to the Atlantic and from the Carolinas to Hudson's Bay was divided between two great families of tribes, distinguished by a radical difference of language. Virginia, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Southeastern New York, New England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Lower Canada were occupied, so far as occupied at all, by tribes speaking various dialects of the Algonquin tongue. They extended, too, far along the borders of the upper lakes, and into the dreary northern wastes beyond. They occupied Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, and their detached bands ranged the lonely hunting-ground of Kentucky.

Like a great island in the midst of the Algonquins lay the country of tribes speaking the generic tongue of the Iroquois. The true Iroquois, or Five Nations, extended through Central New York from the Hudson to the Genesee. Southward lay the Andastes, on and near the Susquehanna; westward, the

Eries, stretching from the Genesee along the southern shore of Lake Erie; and the Neutral Nation, along its northern shore from Niagara towards the Detroit; while the towns of the Hurons lay near the lake to which they have left their name.' Against all these kindred tribes, except, for a time, the Neuters, and against all Algonquins within reach of their restless war-parties, the Iroquois of New York waged war to the knife.

Of the Algonquin populations, the densest, despite a recent epidemic which had swept them off by thousands, was in New England. Here were Mohegans, Pequots, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, Massachusetts, Penacooks, long a thorn in the side of the Puritan. On the whole, these savages were favorable examples of the Algonquin stock, belonging to that section of it which tilled the soil, and was thus in some measure spared the extremes of misery and degradation to which the wandering hunter tribes were often reduced. They owed much, also, to the bounty of the sea, and hence they tended towards the coast; which, before the epidemic, Champlain and Smith had seen at many points studded with wigwams and waving with harvests of maize. Fear, too, drove them eastward, for the Iroquois pursued them with an inveterate enmity. Some paid yearly tribute to their tyrants, while others were still subject to their inroads, flying in terror at the sound of the Mohawk warcry. Westward, the population thinned rapidly; northward, it soon disappeared. Northern New Hampshire, the whole of Vermont, and Western Massachusetts had no human tenants but the roving hunter or prowling warrior.

We have said that this group of tribes was relatively very populous; yet it is more than doubtful whether all of them united, had union been possible, could have mustered eight thousand fighting men. To speak further of them is needless, for they were not within the scope of the Jesuit labors. The

* To the above general statements there was, in the first half of the seventeenth century, but one exception worth notice. A detached branch of the Dahcotah stock, the Winnebago, was established south of Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, in the midst of Algonquins; and small Dahcotah bands had also planted themselves on the eastern side of the Mississippi, nearly in the same latitude.

There was another branch of the Iroquois in the Carolinas, consisting of the Tuscaroras and kindred bands. In 1715 they were joined to the Five Nations.