War was carried on rather by treachery and surprise, and by small bands, than by set battles or large armies. Those who fell were in the north scalped, the hair of the head with the skin being torn off as once practised in the eastern continent. Prisoners were either adopted and naturalized or tortured. Government was of the slightest kind. Kings and hereditary chiefs were found ' in some tribes; ability in others raised a man to command. Laws there were none, or court-, or judicial sentences, except among the more civilized in Mexico and Peru. The manner of making fire in different parts varied, from rubbing two pieces of wood or cane to ingenious machinery by which a revolving stake finally gave a blaze. The tribes believed in a future state of existence, and paid great attention to the bodies of the dead, in some J cases collecting their remains after a certain number of years and burying them with choice objects in fur-lined trenches, with games. and celebrations. Food was placed on the: graves of the dead, and implements of the chase ! for use in the next world. They recognized a i supreme being, and a host of spirits good and ! evil, the latter especially to be propitiated.

I The idea of sacrifice was apparently universal,; and animals and human beings were offered, the former as substitutes for the latter. Cannibalism, exeept where impelled by necessity, was apparently connected with religious ideas. Being firm believers in the power of evil spirits, they ascribed disease and defeat to their malign influence; and the medicine men, who were supposed to counteract these, were resorted to in sickness, and when starting on the war path, the hunt, or long and perilous journeys by land or water. Dreams exercised a great influence over them, and may be considered a part of their religious system. They regarded them as manifestations of cravings of the soul, the non-gratification of which would be attended with serious injury to the whole man. Tribes were divided into clans, and as a rule no man could marry in his own clan, and the children followed the clan of the mother. The scheme of relationship was curious and complex. Woman was in a degraded state. She did all the work except war and hunting. She tilled the earth, and bore all burdens. Parturition i was attended with little pain. Cooking was ! simple, and without seasoning. Baking was | done in holes in the ground, and water was boiled by throwing heated stones into it.

The common plan was to roast over the fire. Corn was parched, and was the food used while travelling, being often hidden in holes marked so as to be recognized. Some diseases introduced by the whites, such as smallpox, and alcoholic drink, have been singularly de-structive and fatal. Disease was left to char-latans and superstitious treatment. The use of vapor baths was perhaps the most general and effective remedy. They employed as emet-ics thoroughwort, spurge, and Indian hemp; and as cathartics also the inner bark of the horse chestnut and butternut; as rubefacients, mayweed and waterpepper. They were ac-quainted with many poisons, which they used for self-destruction, the purposes of revenge, | and in the more southern parts for poisoning their weapons. Blood-letting and cupping were not unknown. In asthma they smoked tobacco and drank infusions of spice wood, sassafras, and skunk cabbage; in coughs, slippery elm and mallow tea, and decoctions of the twigs of the pine and spruce; in renal affections, bearberry, spicewood, and gooseberry root; in diarrhoeas of all kinds, decoctions of the low blackberry, cranesbill, hardhack, white oak bark, partridge berry, and American ipecacuanha or Indian physic (gillenia); in dropsy, the bark of the prickly ash and wild gooseberry, and externally a sweat in heated earth; in amenorrhea, sassafras, spice, and wormwood decoctions; in hemorrhage, powdered puff balls, and astringents firmly bound on the wound.

Incised wounds they sewed together with strings from the inner bark of basswood or fibres from the tendons of deer; diseases of the skin were treated with yellow dock, and abscesses by poultices of onions. - In their intercourse with the Indians the Spanish government educated the sons of princes and chiefs and gave them rank as Spanish nobles, so that to this day distinguished families boast their descent from Mexican and Peruvian monarchs; and among those who governed Mexico as viceroys under the kings of Spain several bore the name of Montezuma. The lower orders of Indians were assimilated with those of the Spanish emigrants, and at an early period were admitted to the same civil rights. The wilder tribes were gradually formed to civilization by missionaries under the system of reductions, a presidio of soldiers being assigned to each. The children of the first converts soon mingled with the more civilized Indians. The consequence is that the great mass of the people of Spanish America are of Indian origin, some towns being almost exclusively so; and it would be almost impossible from our present data to give the exact Indian, white, and mixed population.

The late president of Mexico, Juarez, was a pure Indian; and so have been many of the presidents of Central America. The number of wild tribes is consequently much less in proportion to the whole Indian population in Spanish America than in the United States. Of the missions on the plan of reductions the most famous were those of Paraguay. - The French, settling in Canada and subsequently Louisiana, had less civilized tribes to deal with; but they acquired a permanent ascendancy over them without wars. The Iroquois, occupying the present state of New York, were the great enemies of the French and their allies. French missionaries, however, repeatedly established missions even among the Iroquois, and the descendants of their converts form three towns in Canada. Missions begun at the commencement of the French settlements among the Nasquapees, Montagnais, Algonquins, Chippewas, and Ottawas are still maintained among the surviving remnants of those tribes. New missions under Catholic and Protestant direction have been established among the Crees, who had been incidentally reached by the old missionaries, and the Athabascan tribes and those in British Columbia and Oregon. The efforts of the French government to elevate the social condition of the Indians were unremitting; provision was made for their naturalization as citizens; but these efforts failed, although often renewed, and the most experienced gave up the task as hopeless.