and accordingly the project of going to the Auglaize was abandoned.  Very soon afterwards, Laulewasikaw assumed the office of a prophet; and forthwith commenced that career of cunning and pretended sorcery, which enabled him to sway the Indian mind in a wonderful degree, and win for himself a name on the page of history.  A concise notice of his prophetical achievements is subjoined.  While it serves to display his individual character and endowments, it also presents an interesting and instructive phase of aboriginal character.

It happened about this time that an old Shawanoe, named Penagashega, or the Change of Feathers, who had for some years been engaged in the respectable calling of a prophet, fell sick and died.  Laulewasikaw, who had marked the old man’s influence with the Indians, adroitly caught up the mantle of the dying prophet, and assumed his sacred office.  He changed his name from Laulewasikaw, to Tenskwautawau,[A] meaning the Open Door, because he undertook to point out to the Indians the new modes of life which they should pursue.  In the month of November, of this year, he assembled a considerable number of Shawanoes, Wyandots, Ottaways and Senecas, at Wapakonatta, on the Auglaize river, when he unfolded to them the new character with which he was clothed, and made his first public effort in that career of religious imposition, which, in a few years, was felt by the remote tribes of the upper lakes, and on the broad plains which stretch beyond the Mississippi.  At this time nothing, it is believed, was said by him in regard to the grand confederacy of the tribes, for the recovery of their lands, which shortly afterwards became an object of ambition with his brother; and, in the furtherance of which he successfully exerted his power and influence, as a prophet.  In this assemblage he declaimed against witchcraft, which many of the Indians practised and still more believed.  He pronounced that those who continued bewitched, or exerted their arts on others, would never go to heaven nor see the Great Spirit.  He next took up the subject of drunkenness, against which he harangued with great force; and, as appeared subsequently, with much success.  He told them that since he had become a prophet, he went up into the clouds; that the first place he came to was the dwelling of the Devil, and that all who had died drunkards were there, with flames issuing out of their mouths.  He acknowledged that he had himself been a drunkard, but that this awful scene had reformed him.  Such was the effect of his preaching against this pernicious vice, that many of his followers became alarmed, and ceased to drink the “fire-water,” a name by which whiskey is significantly called among the Indians.  He likewise, declaimed against the custom of Indian women intermarrying with white men, and denounced it as one of the causes of their unhappiness.  Among other doctrines of his new code, he insisted on a community of property—­a very comfortable