During this assembly, as on other occasions, I frequently remarked the skill and facility with which the Indians communicate their ideas by signs and gestures. Their movements are highly expressive, and appear to be reduced to a language as perfect and communicable as that of the deaf and dumb among us. By means of these signs an Indian will relate the chief events of his life. This mute speech may be styled a language of precaution and defense, for when they meet in the desert, in their excursions, they make signs while yet very far apart, before they approach. They immediately know with whom they have to deal and what there is in question. They have, however, still more remarkable modes of communicating thought. The large figures displayed on their buffalo-robes are hieroglyphics, as easily understood by an intelligent Indian as written words are by ourselves; and they often contain the narrative of some important event. This is not, however, because words are wanting in their various dialects, which are quite copious and expressive.
I attended the council from the outset to the close. As I have already stated, io,ooo Indians, belonging to different tribes, many of which had been at war from time immemo rial, met on the same plain. During the twenty-three days of the assembly there was no disorder: on the contrary, all was peaceable and tranquil, which is saying much for Indians. They seemed all to form but a single nation. Polite and kindly to each other, they spent their leisure hours in visits, banquets and dances; spoke of their once interminable wars and divisions as past things, to be absolutely forgotten, or " buried," according to their expression. There was not a remark in all their conversations to displease; never did the calumet pass in peace through so many hands. To convey an idea of the importance of this action, I must observe that smoking the calumet together is equivalent to a treaty confirmed by oath, which no one can contravene without dishonoring himself in the eyes of all his tribe. It was really a touching spectacle to see the calumet, the Indian emblem of