The mention of a circumstance equally extraordinary in the Indian character, may be recorded here.  If the sufferer in these afflictions be an Indian, during the whole of his agony a strange rivalry passes between them which shall outdo each other, they inflicting, and he in enduring these tortures.  Not a groan, not a sigh, not a distortion of countenance is allowed to escape him.  He smokes, and looks even cheerful.  He occasionally chants a strain of his war song.  He vaunts his exploits performed in afflicting death and desolation in their villages.  He enumerates the names of their relatives and friends that he has slain.  He menaces them with the terrible revenge that his friends will inflict by way of retaliation.  He even derides their ignorance in the art of tormenting; assures them that he had afflicted much more ingenious torture upon their people; and indicates more excruciating modes of inflicting pain, and more sensitive parts of the frame to which to apply them.

They are exceedingly dexterous in the horrid surgical operation of taking off the scalp—­that is, a considerable surface of the hairy integument of the crown of the cranium.  Terrible as the operation is, there are not wanting great numbers of cases of persons who have survived, and recovered from it.  The scalps of enemies thus taken, even when not paid for, as has been too often the infamous custom of their white auxiliaries, claiming to be civilized, are valued as badges of family honor, and trophies of the bravery of the warrior.  On certain days and occasions, young warriors take a new name, constituting a new claim to honor, according to the number of scalps they have taken, or the bravery and exploits of those from whom they were taken.  This name they deem a sufficient compensation for every fatigue and danger.  Another ludicrous superstition tends to inspire them with the most heroic sentiments.  They believe that all the fame, intelligence, and bravery that appertained to the enemy they have slain is transferred to them, and thenceforward becomes their intellectual property.  Hence, they are excited with the most earnest appetite to kill warriors of distinguished fame.  This article of Indian faith affords an apt illustration of the ordinary influence of envy, which seems to inspire the person whom it torments with the persuasion, that all the merit it can contract from the envied becomes its own, and that the laurels shorn from another’s brow will sprout on its own.

He witnessed also their modes of hardening their children to that prodigious power of unshrinking endurance, of which such astonishing effects have just been recorded.  This may be fitly termed the Indian system of gymnastics.  The bodies of the children of both sexes are inured to hardships by compelling them to endure prolonged fastings, and to bathe in the coldest water.  A child of eight years, fasts half a day; and one of twelve, a whole day without food or drink.  The face is blacked during the fast, and is washed