It is, no doubt, owing to such circumstances that great families, or communities of savages bearing the same type and speaking the same tongue, have been subdivided into so many distinct tribes.  Thus it has been with the Shoshones, whose emigrant families have formed the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes.  The Tonquewas have since sprung from the Comanches, the Lepans and the Texas[11] (now extinct) from the Apaches, and the Navahoes from the Arrapahoes.  Among the Nadowessies or Dacotahs, the subdivision has been still greater, the same original tribe having given birth to the Konsas, the Mandans, the Tetons, the Yangtongs, Sassitongs, Ollah-Gallahs, the Siones, the Wallah Wallahs, the Cayuses, the Black-feet, and lastly the Winnebagoes.

[Footnote 11:  Formerly there was a considerable tribe of Indians, by the name of Texas, who have all disappeared, from continual warfare.]

The Algonquin species, or family, produced twenty-one different tribes:  the Micmacs, Etchemins, Abenakis, Sokokis, Pawtuckets, Pokanokets, Narragansets, Pequods, Mohegans, Lenilenapes, Nanticokes, Powatans, Shawnees, Miamis, Illinois, Chippewas, Ottawas, Menomonies, Sacs, Foxes, and the Kickapoos, which afterwards subdivided again into more than a hundred nations.

But, to return to the laws of murder:—­It often happens that the nephew, or brother of the murderer, will offer his life in expiation.  Very often these self-sacrifices are accepted, principally among the poorer families, but the devoted is not put to death; he only loses his relationship and connection with his former family; he becomes a kind of slave or bondsman for life in the lodges of the relations of the murdered.

Sometimes, too, the guilty man’s life is saved by a singular and very ancient law; it, however, happens but rarely.  If the murdered leaves a widow with children, this widow may claim the criminal as her own, and he becomes her husband nominally, that is to say, he must hunt and provide for the subsistence of the family.

When the murderer belongs to a hostile tribe, war is immediately declared; if, on the contrary, he belongs to a friendly nation, the tribe will wait three or four months till the chiefs of that nation come to offer excuses and compensation.  When they do this, they bring presents, which they leave at the door of the council lodge, one side of which is occupied by the relations of the victims, the other by the chiefs and warriors of the tribe, and the centre by the ambassadors.  One of these opens the ceremony by pronouncing a speech of peace, while another offers the pipe to the relations.  If they refuse it, and the great chief of the tribe entertains a particular regard for the other nation, he rises and offers himself to the relations the calumet of conciliation.  If refused still, all the children and babes of the murdered one’s family are called into the lodge, and the pipe passed a third time in that part of the lodge.  Then if a child even two or three months old touches it, the Indians consider the act as a decision of the great Master of Life, the pipe goes round, the presents are carried in, and put at the feet of the plaintiffs.  When on the contrary, the calumet passes untouched, the murderer’s life alone can satisfy the tribe.