[Footnote B: See note, vol. i. page 195.]
[Footnote D: Bay of Saganaum, in Lake Huron.]
[Footnote E: Cress or _crease_, a poisoned arrow, seldom used, however, by the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains.]
[Footnote F: Bird of Ages--See the Tradition vol. ii. page 35.]
[Footnote H: Scalps are suspended from a pole in the lodge, and usually in the smoke.]
[Footnote I: Alluding to the custom of the Indian of shaving off all the hair except the scalp-lock.]
[Footnote J: _Wekolis_--another name for the whip-poor-will.]
The memory of the Indians is as astonishing as their native sagacity and penetration. They are entirely destitute of those helps which we have invented to ease our memory, or supply the want of it; yet they are never at a loss to recall to their minds any particular circumstance with which they would impress their hearers. On some occasions, they do indeed make use of little sticks to remind them of the different subjects they have to discuss; and with ease they form a kind of local memory, and that so sure and infallible, that they will speak for a great length of time--sometimes for three or four hours together--and display twenty different presents, each of which requires an entire discourse, without forgetting any thing, and even without hesitation.
Every Indian has a friend nearly of the same age as himself, to whom he attaches himself by the most indissoluble bonds. Two persons, thus united by one common interest, are capable of undertaking and hazarding every thing in order to aid and mutually succour each other; death itself, according to their belief, can only separate them for a time: they are well assured of meeting again in the other world never to part, where they are persuaded they shall have occasion for the same services from one another. Charlevoix tells of an Indian who was a christian, but who did not live according to the maxims of the gospel, and who, being threatened with hell by a Jesuit, asked this missionary whether he thought his friend who was lately departed had gone into that place of torment; the father answered him that he had good grounds to think that the Lord had had mercy upon him, and taken him to heaven. "Then, I won't go to hell, neither?" replied the Indian, and this motive brought him to do every thing that was desired of him; that is to say he would have been full as willing to go to hell as heaven, had he thought to find his companion there.