there was an ecclesiastical council sitting at the time, in which Mr. Harris was engaged; and in the multiplicity and confusion of business, the message was not received until after his decease. The object of the request was, therefore, not positively known; but his wife believed his desire was to express more friendly feelings toward the religious character of the missionary than he had previously manifested. He remarked "that the minister knew that he had always been his opposer, and now, as by the resolution of the council there was a prospect of seeing his people more united than they had been for years, he desired to have some talk with him.”

When his last attack of illness came upon him, he said he should not survive, and refused all medical assistance. His request of his wife was, that at the moment of his departure she should place in his hand a certain vial of water, possessing, as he supposed, a charm sufficiently potent to keep away the devil, should the latter attempt, as he was not without apprehension might be the fact, to take away his soul. That vial, he believed, would be all sufficient to secure his spirit an unobstructed flight to the fair hunting grounds. He died on the 20th of January, 1830, at his residence, near the church and mission house at the Seneca village. The management of his funeral was committed by himself to his wife's son-in-law, William Jones. He

The women among the Indians regulate the household affairs altogether-prescribing the locations of their cabins, or houses, as the case may be, and dictating removals at their own pleasure. By virtue of this authority, after the wife of Red Jacket embraced Christianity, she removed the residence of her lord to the vicinity of the church and the house of the missionary, for the convenience of public worship, and of conversations with her spiritual guide. Here was the mission school, in which her grandchildren were receiving gratuitous instruction in the elementary, principles of knowledge. Here was the chapel, to which, since the change in her religious views, she had become very much attached; and here were the missionary and his family, whose instruction and counsels she had for some time been accustomed to regard as those of friends to her people.

himself had not a near kinsman in the world. His friends of the wolf clan, to which he belonged, determined that his remains should be carried to the church in which they worshiped, and buried in the ground belonging to the Christian party. The funeral was numerously attended, not only by his own race, but by the white people who gathered in from the adjacent country. Among the latter were some of the leaders of the infidel white men who had acted in concert with the deceased in his opposition to Christianity. These latter came with high expectations of beholding a splendid pagan funeral, accompanied by the howlings of women, and all the barbarous rites and ceremonies incident to savage funerals in the days when darkness brooded over the wilds of the continent. Great, therefore, was their disappointment on finding themselves in the train of a Christian funeral, attended only by its simple and solemn observances. Thus died the renowned Sa-go-ye-wat-ha, whose great talents, and matchless gifts of oratory, had so long exerted such a powerful influence over the councils of his nation.

1

1 My authority for the preceding account of the last days of Red Jacket's life, including the last council summoned by him, and his funeral, is the Rev. Mr. Harris, with whom I have had repeated and full conversations upon the subject, and whose report, written at the time, and published in the Missionary Herald, vol. xxvi, I have consulted. Very grievous misrepresentations in regard to the conduct of this gentleman at the death and funeral of the chief were sent abroad by the disappointed white pagans, referred to in the text, some of which unfortunately found their way into the sketch published in the Indian Biography of Colonel M'Kenney. I quote a few passages: "There had long been a missionary among the Senecas, who was sustained by the party among the natives who had procured the deposition and disgrace of Red Jacket. This gentleman of the dark dress' was of course looked upon with high disfavor by Red Jacket, who considered him one of the agents by whom his nation had been distracted." Now it has been seen by the statements in the text, that the chief was desirous of dying in peace with the missionary. Again it is recorded in the same work, and has thus gone upon the records of history, that, "The neighboring missionary, with a disregard for the feelings of the bereaved, and the injunctions of the dead, for which it is difficult to account, assem

Some of the speeches of Red Jacket, as noted down in the closing conversations of his life, were prophetic, and have already been fulfilled. "The craft and avarice of the white man will prevail," said he. And they have prevailed. Less than nine years had elapsed after his decease, when every remaining foot of the ancient inheritance of the Senecas was ceded to the white man, in exchange for a tract of country west of the Missouri, to which the remnant of their people and the Tuscaroras are to remove. When this removal takes place, it may be considered the final dispersion, if not the extinguishment, of the once mighty confederacy of the Five Nations.

This confederacy was never, perhaps - certainly not within the knowledge of the white man-so great in its numerical strength as has been supposed, or as might be inferred from their deeds, and the extent of their dominion. And yet, within that period, from their superior organization, their discipline, and their prowess, their name was terrible over a large section of the American continent. It is within the knowledge of the white man

bled his party, took possession of the body, and conveyed it to their meeting house. The immediate friends of Red Jacket, amazed at the transaction, abandoned the preparations they were making for the funeral rites, and followed the body in silence to the place of worship, where a service was performed, which, considering the opinions of the deceased, was as idle as it was indecorous. They were then told from the sacred desk, that if they had any thing to say they had now an opportunity. Incredulity and scorn were pictured on the faces of the Indians, and no reply was made, except by a chief called General Blanket, who briefly remarked "This house was built for the white man; the friends of Red Jacket cannot be heard in it." Notwithstanding this touching appeal, and the dying injunctions of the Seneca chief, his remains were taken to the grave prepared by the whites, and interred. Some of the Indians followed the corpse, but the more immediate friends of the deceased took a last view of their lifeless chief, in the sanctuary of that religion which he had always opposed, and hastened from a scene which overwhelmed them with humiliation and sorrow." Now all this is very well told, and with good dramatic effect. But, like most other dramatic compositions, it is an entire fiction.

that the cry of Mohawk! would cause the Indian to fly in terror. The Delawares were conquered and made tributaries by them. They drove the Algonquins and the French before them, sacking Montreal, and raising their war whoop almost before the gates of Quebec, while at the west and south their arms were extended to the mouth of the Ohio, and the confines of Florida. For upward of a century they formed a living barrier between the English colonies and the French; and for more than two centuries have they been struggling against the gradual encroachments of the white men, striving but in vain to bear up against a hundred successive storms of adversity, and maintain an independent existence. During this period, nation after nation of their hapless race has melted away and disappeared from the face of the earth. Fate in her stern behests has at length decreed that the Five Nations are likewise to be numbered among nations lost on earth.

The fate of this people is a subject for deep and anxious reflection. What is the destiny of those who yet remain? Are they - any considerable portion of them, at leasteventually to yield to the influences and usages of civilization, and thus to be rescued from extinction? Or is it among the inscrutable designs of Providence that the whole race shall disappear before the all conquering Anglo Saxons? Their destiny has been the subject of the gravest and most interesting contemplation, almost from the day of the discovery to the present. Philanthropists, for more than two hundred years, have been endeavoring to guide them into the paths of civilization, and Christians to win them from the gloom of paganism to the brighter hopes and promises of the gospel. But the efforts of both have been exerted to very little purpose. Small numbers, at various periods, have been prevailed upon to yield a faint

1 Colden's Six Nations.