There was an incident similar, which happened among the Cherokees.  When all the liquor was expended the Indians went home, leading with them, at my request, those that were drunk.  One, however, soon came back, and earnestly importuned me for more Nawahti, which signifies both physic and spirituous liquor.  They, as they are now become great liars, suspect all others of being infected with their own disposition and principles.  The more I excused myself, the more anxious he grew, so as to become offensive.  I then told him I had only one quarter of a bottle of strong physic, which sick people might drink in small quantities, for the cure of inward pains:  and, laying it down before him, I declared I did not on any account choose to part with it, but as his speech had become very long and troublesome, he might do just as his heart directed him concerning it.  He took it up, saying, his heart was very poor for physic, but he would cure it, and make it quite straight.  The bottle contained three gills of strong spirits of turpentine, which, in a short time he drank off.  Such a quantity would have demolished me or any white person.  The Indians, in general, are either capable of suffering exquisite pain longer than we are, or of showing more constancy and composure in their torments.  The troublesome visiter soon tumbled down and foamed prodigiously.  I then sent for some of his relations to carry him home.  They came; I told them he drank greedily, and too much of the physic.  They said, it was his usual custom, when the red people bought the English physic.  They gave him a decoction of proper herbs and roots, the next day sweated him, repeated the former draught, and he got well.  As these turpentine spirits did not inebriate him, but only inflamed his intestines, he well remembered the burning quality of my favorite physic, and cautioned the rest from ever teasing me for any physic I had concealed in any sort of bottles for my own use; otherwise they might be sure it would spoil them like the eating of fire.”

We are pleased to note that the same white man, who so resolutely resisted the encroachments of Key-way-no-wut, devised a more humane expedient in a similar dilemma.

“Mr. B. told me that, when he first went into the Indian country, they got the taste of his peppermint, and, after that, colics prevailed among them to an alarming extent, till Mrs. B. made a strong decoction of flagroot, and gave them in place of their favorite medicine.  This effected, as might be supposed, a radical cure.”

I am inclined to recommend Adair to the patient reader, if such may be found in these United States, with the assurance that, if he will have tolerance for its intolerable prolixity and dryness, he will find, on rising from the book, that he has partaken of an infusion of real Indian bitters, such as may not be drawn from any of the more attractive memoirs on the same subject.

Another book of interest, from its fidelity and candid spirit, though written without vivacity, and by a person neither of large mind nor prepared for various inquiry, is Carver’s Travels, “for three years throughout the interior parts of America, for more than five thousand miles.”