United States

The Iroquois were a people far more conspicuous in history, and their institutions are not yet extinct. In early and recent times, they have been closely studied, and no little light has been cast upon a subject as difficult and obscure as it is curious. By comparing the statements of observers, old and new, the character of their singular organization becomes sufficiently clear.

 THE HURON SEMINARY. - MADAME DE LA PELTRIE. - HER PIOUS SCHEMES. - 
 HER SHAM MARRIAGE. - SHE VISITS THE URSULINES OF TOURS. - 
 MARIE DE SAINT BERNARD. - MARIE DE L'INCARNATION. - HER ENTHUSIASM. - 
 HER MYSTICAL MARRIAGE. - HER DEJECTION. - HER MENTAL CONFLICTS. - 

 THE TOBACCO MISSIONS. - ST. JEAN ATTACKED. - DEATH OF GARNIER. - 
 THE JOURNEY OF CHABANEL. - HIS DEATH. - GARREAU AND GRELON.

The religious belief of the North-American Indians seems, on a first view, anomalous and contradictory. It certainly is so, if we adopt the popular impression. Romance, Poetry, and Rhetoric point, on the one hand, to the august conception of a one all-ruling Deity, a Great Spirit, omniscient and omnipresent; and we are called to admire the untutored intellect which could conceive a thought too vast for Socrates and Plato. On the other hand, we find a chaos of degrading, ridiculous, and incoherent superstitions.

 DAUVERSIERE AND THE VOICE FROM HEAVEN. - ABBE OLIER. - THEIR SCHEMES. - 
 THE SOCIETY OF NOTRE-DAME DE MONTREAL. - MAISONNEUVE. - DEVOUT LADIES. - 
 MADEMOISELLE MANCE. - MARGUERITE BOURGEOIS. - THE MONTREALISTS AT QUEBEC. - 
 JEALOUSY. - QUARRELS. - ROMANCE AND DEVOTION. - EMBARKATION. - 
 FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL.

 FAMINE AND THE TOMAHAWK. - A NEW ASYLUM. - 
 VOYAGE OF THE REFUGEES TO QUEBEC. - MEETING WITH BRESSANI. - 
 DESPERATE COURAGE OF THE IROQUOIS. - INROADS AND BATTLES. - 
 DEATH OF BUTEUX.

POPULATION. - In the twenty years which had elapsed since 1840 the population of our country had risen to over 31,000,000. In New York alone there were, in 1860, about as many people as lived in the whole United States in 1789.

THE SITUATION IN 1754. - The French were now in armed possession of the Ohio valley. Their chain of forts bounded the British colonies from Lake Champlain to Fort Duquesne. Unless they were dislodged, all hope of colonial expansion westward was ended. To dislodge them meant war, and the certainty of war led to a serious attempt to unite the colonies.

THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. - After Lincoln's election, the cotton states, one by one, passed ordinances declaring that they left the Union. First to go was South Carolina (December 20, 1860), and by February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had followed. On February 4 delegates from six of these seven states met at Montgomery, Alabama, framed, a constitution, [1] established the "Confederate States of America," and elected Jefferson Davis [2] and Alexander H. Stephens provisional President and Vice President.

The French and Indian War gave the colonists valuable training as soldiers, freed them from the danger of attack by their French neighbors, and so made them less dependent on Great Britain for protection. But the mother country took no account of this, and at once began to do things which in ten years' time drove the colonies into rebellion.