no fact can travel over without incurring the dangers of being perverted on the road, is another.  But the most fatal of al he influences that tend to mislead the judgment of the American citizen, is to be found in the abuse of a machinery that was intended to produce an exactly contrary effect.  If the tongue was given to man to communicate ideas to his fellows, so has philosophy described it as “a gift to conceal his thoughts.”  If the press was devised to circulate truth, so has it been changed into a means of circulating lies.  One is easily, nay, more easily, sent abroad on the four winds of the heavens than the other.  Truth requires candor, impartiality, honesty, research, and industry; but a falsehood, whether designed or not, stands in need of neither.  Of that which is the most easily produced, the country gets the most; and it were idle to imagine that a people who blindly and unresistingly submit to be put, as it might be, under the feet of falsehood, as respects all their own public men, can ever get very accurate notions of those of other nations.

Thus was it with Onoah.  His name was unknown to the whites, except as a terrible and much-dreaded avenger of the wrongs of his race.  With the red men it was very different.  They had no “forked tongues” to make falsehood take the place of truth; or if such existed they were not believed.  The Pottawattamies now present knew all about Tecumseh, [Footnote:  A “tiger stooping for his prey.”] of whom the whites had also various and ample accounts.  This Shawanee chief had long been active among them, and his influence was extended far and near.  He was a bold, restless, and ingenious warrior; one, perhaps, who better understood the art of war, as it was practised among red men, than any Indian then living.  They knew the name and person, also, of his brother Elkswatawa, [Footnote:  “A door opened.”] or the Prophet, whose name has also become incorporated with the histories of the times.  These two chiefs were very powerful, though scarce dwelling regularly in any tribe; but their origin, their careers, and their characters were known to all, as were those of their common father, Pukeesheno, [Footnote:  “I light from fly—­“] and their mother, Meethetaske.[Footnote:  “A turtle laying her eggs in the sand.”] But with Onoah it was very different.  With him the past was as much of a mystery as the future.  No Indian could say even of what tribe he was born.  The totem that he bore on his person belonged to no people then existing on the continent, and all connected with him, his history, nation, and family, was conjecture and fancy.