SHAWANESE AND THE DELAWARES.

In an hour, we had left the house of the blacksmith, and were dashing through the moist and glistening grass of the prairie, in front of one of the villages of the Shawanese. It consisted of about a dozen houses or cabins, grouped together upon the top of a hill, and looking on a ragged little prairie. There was but little attraction in its appearance, and withal a most philosophic indifference to cleanliness or comfort.

Our approach was announced by about twenty half-starved dogs, who set up a yell which brought to the doors every inhabitant of the place, old enough to be tormented with curiosity.

Presently two of them came forward to meet us. The first was a fat wheezing Indian of about fifty; he was dressed partly after the fashion of the whites, and partly in his own native style. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat, ornamented with several bands of tin; a pair of large black-rimmed spectacles; a blue calico shirt, and a pair of blue cloth pantaloons, secured close to his legs by several bands of yellow riband.

His companion, who was a little herring of a fellow, retained more of the Indian in his dress and appearance. His head was shaved, with the exception of a single lock[C], which luxuriated upon the top of his crown, surrounded by a little pallisado of stiff bristles, left standing at its root amid the general harvest. His face and head had been painted with vermilion, and at a distance bore a strong resemblance to a large red potatoe. A shirt of calico was the only article of civilised manufacture about him. His leggings were of deerskin, the edges of which were cut into a rough border; and his mocassins were made of the same material.

Upon our approach, they came out with the intention of holding a conversation with us, but, owing to an equal ignorance of the language of each other, we could obtain from them but little information. After wasting a short time in attempting to glean intelligence of our future route, we gave it up, and started forward at random. We rode up hills and down hollows; spattered through streams; galloped over patches of prairie, and through clumps of woodland; until, after riding for more than an hour, we found ourselves in the edge of a wood, and in the very heart of a town of the Delawares.

A general barking of dogs again announced us to the Indians. They flocked out to meet us. From them we learned our route, and, passing through the village, continued our journey towards the cantonment.

There is but little in the civilised Indian to excite interest, or to enlist the feelings; they are a race between the whites, and their own people, as God made them. We have heard tales of those from whom they sprang; of their contests for their soil; of their fierce and bloody defence of their villages, and of the graves of their ancestors. But where are they? Where are the braves of the nation? They have come within the blighting influence of the white man; they have been swept away even as is the grass of their own prairie before the fire of the hunter. A spring may come again to revive the drooping face of nature; but to them there is no spring—no renovation. It is probable that, ere two centuries shall elapse, there will be but a very remnant of their race—a few wretched beings lingering about the then abodes of civilisation, unheeded, unnoticed—strangers in the land of their fathers.

We paused for a short time in the edge of the forest to take a lingering look of the village; then turning away, we pursued our course until our horses again brought us to the prairie, upon which was imprinted the wide trail leading to Leavenworth.