He has great ancestral pride--a feeling much in esteem for its ennobling powers; and the _totem_ has all the meaning and use of any other armorial bearing.

In the endurance of fatigue, hunger, thirst, and exposure, the forest hero has no superior; in military affairs he fully adopts the orthodox maxim that all stratagems are lawful in war.

In short, nothing is wanting but a Homer to build our Iliad material into "lofty rhyme," or a Scott to weave it into border romance; and as we are encouraged to look for Scotts and Homers at some future day, it is manifestly our duty to be recording fleeting traditions and describing peculiar customs, before the waves of time shall have swept over the retreating footsteps of the "salvage man," and left us nothing but lake and forest, mountains and cataracts, out of which to make our poetry and romance.
The Indians themselves are full of poetry.

Their legends embody poetic fancy of the highest and most adventurous flight; their religious ceremonies refer to things unseen with a directness which shows how bold and vivid are their conceptions of the imaginative.

The war-song--the death-song--the song of victory--the cradle-chant--the lament for the slain--these are the overflowings of the essential poetry of their untaught souls.