Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/127

Rh We saw the Chief of the Senecas, the successor of Red-Jacket, a tall man, with a very bright eye. Methought his countenance expressed a cunning and adroitness, the fruit of intercourse with the whites, rather than that Roman dignity and taciturnity, which of old marked the rulers of the forest, or that tendency to sarcastic eloquence, which distinguished his immediate predecessor.

While in the vicinity of the Indian villages, numbers of their females were seen at the different stopping-places on the railroad, offering for sale their neatly made articles of bark and bead-work. Occasionally they have with them their young infants, bound flat upon a board, and incapable of motion except in a very limited degree. They seemed fond of covering them with embroidered mantles, clasped in front with gilded or plated studs and buttons. One of these black-eyed babies was taken through the car-window, and we could not but admire its plump cheeks and smiling face, apparently more full of health and contentment than many of those babes whose nurture is made an unceasing labor both to parents and nurses. A passenger, in paying for some articles purchased of the mother, offered more money, and inquired what sum would be demanded for the child. At first, the idea was not fully comprehended. But when it was, all the sang-froid that the race so often affect, vanished like snow before the sun, and with a wild exclamation in her native tongue, the dark-browed mother rushed