“Since closing my letter of this morning, Lieut.  Root, just from Fort Winnebago, informs me that he attended the payment of the Menomonies, at the Grande Chute; that liquor, as usual, had found its way to the place of payment, and that, in consequence, an Indian had killed two Indian women.  That the individual (murderer) was taken to the tent of the agent, Colonel Boyd, but that, in consequence of the repeated and threatening demands of the Indians for the man, the agent was obliged to deliver him up to them, and that they then, in front of the tent, inflicted wounds of death, from six different blades, upon the body of the murderer, beat his brain out with clubs, and then threw his body upon a burning fire, after which he was dragged some distance, to which place he might be traced by attached embers strewed along the path.

“A child was crushed to death by a drunken Indian accidentally.  Lieut.  Root informs me that he left the ground, soon after the scene above alluded to, and that many of the Indians were armed with knives, and in much excitement.”

6th.  I visited Mr. Gallatin at his house in Bleecker Street, and spent the entire morning in listening to his instructive conversation, in the course of which he spoke of early education, geometric arithmetic, the principles of languages and history, American and European.  He said, speaking of the

EARLY EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.—­Few children are taught to read well early, and, in consequence, they never can become good readers.  A page should, as it were, dissolve before the eye, and be absorbed by the mind.  Reading and spelling correctly cannot be too early taught, and should be thoroughly taught.

Arithmetic.—­G.  There is no good arithmetic in which the reasons are given, so as to be intelligible to children.  Condorcet wrote the best tract on the subject, while in confinement at a widow’s house near Paris, before his execution.  The language of arithmetic is universal, the eight digits serving all combinations.  They were not introduced till 1200.  The Russians count by sticks and beads.  The Romans must have had some such method.  M stood for 1000, D for 500, C for 100, L for 50, X for ten, V for five, and I for one.  But how could they multiply complex sums by placing one under another.

LANGUAGES.—­S.  How desirable it would be if so simple a system could be applied to language.

G.  Ah! it was not designed by the Creator.  He evidently designed diversity.  I have recently received some of the native vocabularies from Mackenzie—­the Blackfeet and Fall Indians, &c.  Parker had furnished in his travels vocabularies of the Nez Perces, Chinooks, &c.

LEADING FAMILIES.—­S.  The term Algonquin, as commonly understood, is not sufficiently comprehensive for the people indicated.

G.  I intended to extend it by adding the term “Lenape.”  The Choctaw and the Muscogee is radically the same.  The Chickasaw and Choctaw has been previously deemed one.  Du Pratz wrote about the Mobilian language without even suspecting that it was the Choctaw.