sweet as the laurel leaf; the corn was to represent her capacity to grow it and prepare it for his food, and to fulfil all the duties of a faithful wife.  These ceremonies completed, the bride dropped the ear of corn which she held in her right hand, and tendered that hand to the bridegroom, who took it and said:  “I am thy husband.”  She replied:  “I am thy wife.”  The bridegroom then went round and gave his hand to every member of the family of his wife.  He then took his bride by the arm and led her around and she took the right hand of all the family of the bridegroom.  This done, he walked with her to his bed, and said:  “This is our bed, keep it undefiled.”

There obtained among these primitive beings a most curious and most disgusting custom.  The young marriageable females were permitted to prostitute themselves for gain, in order to provide a marriage portion; and she who could thus enrich herself was the most distinguished and the most sought.  But after marriage, she was compelled to purity, both by their laws and by public sentiment; and in all the intercourse of the French with them, no instance of infidelity was ever known in a wife.

The great sun was indeed their Lycurgus.  If before his advent among them they had any laws, these had become obsolete, and his edicts adopted universally.  Their traditions represent him as living to extreme old age, seeing his descendants of the fourth generation.  These were all little suns, and constituted the nobility of their nation, which extended at one time to the country above, as far as St. Louis and across to the Wabash.  These traditions were carefully kept.  Every two years there were selected from the most intelligent boys of the nation ten, to whom these traditions were carefully taught by the depositories of them who had kept them best for the greatest time.  They were careful to exact that no word or fact should be withheld, and this lesson was daily taught until the boy was a man, and every legend a familiar memory.  These he was compelled to repeat daily lest the memory should rust, and for this purpose they went forth to all the villages repeating all of these legends to all the people.

There were others selected in like manner to whom the laws were taught as the traditions, and in like manner these were taught the people.  In every community there was a little sun to administer these laws, and every complaint was submitted to him, and great ceremony was observed at every trial, especially criminal trials.  The judge, or little sun, purified himself in the forest, imploring the enlightenment of the Good Spirit, and purging away the influence of bad spirits by his purification; and when he felt himself a fitted tabernacle of pure justice, he came forward and rendered his judgment in the presence of all the villagers of his jurisdiction, whose attention was compulsory.