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Bois Brules, is the name given to the half-breeds,
in the Indian country.

Pemican is thus made. The flesh of the deer or
buffalo is cut into very thin slices, and hung in the smoke of
a lodge till perfectly exsicated. It is then beaten to powder
in a wooden mortar, and mixed in equal parts with tallow, or
what is better, marrow-fat. It is a nutritious food, and when
well made will keep two years.

Blackbirds abound all over the country west of the
Mississippi and north of the Missouri. Wherever grain is
sown they assemble in incredible numbers, and destroy it
in the milk.

Allume. The voyageurs stop at the end of every
league to rest and smoke. A league is, in their diction, a
pipe. Their admeasurement commonly exceeds the truth,
by a third. We have read in the journal of a sapient English
traveller, that `a pipe' is the distance a man may walk
while a pipe is being smoked.

Lamed by the weight of their snow shoes.
Every one who has travelled an hundred miles on snow
shoes will understand this.

Such conduct as is attributed to La Verdure in the
text is not unfrequently seen in the Northwest. We could
bring proofs that our narrative is literally true, with the exception
only of names.

The children of the very remote Indians are often as
much alarmed at the first sight of a white, as our infants
might be at seeing an Indian.

Dog sledges are the most approved and common vehicles
of draught and transportation, in the region of prairie.
Three dogs will draw the carcass of a buffalo.

The enormities detailed in the text were actually
committed. If any person doubts, let him refer to Lord
Selkirk's book.

This is fact.

The Red River is very crooked. A man may, by
intersecting the points, walk farther in one hour than a boat
can go in three.

Whiskey is the ultimate argument with all Indians
that have once tasted it. With ardent spirits they can be
bribed to commit any villany. It is thus that Indian traders
use it, to their moral destruction. The remote tribes get too
little to do them any physical harm.

The buffaloes emigrated. No living can be
more precarious than that which depends on hunting the
buffalo. They are constantly migrating.

To avoid being scented, &c. The scent of the
buffalo is very acute. He is not much alarmed at the sight
of a human being at a distance, but if a man gets to windward
of him he takes to flight immediately.

The speed of a cabri. The animal called by the
voyaguers the cabri, is found only in the prairies. It is of the
goat kind, smaller than a deer, and so swift that neither horse
nor dog can overtake it.

The Indian whose medal, &c. Indian agents
for the British and American governments confer silver
medals on the chiefs, which, as they cannot add much to
their importance, are little esteemed. The British medal
has on one side the arms of the United Kingdoms, and on
the other the head of his Majesty. The American medal
bears the effigy of the President for the time being, and a
pipe and tomahawk crossed.

To prevent the iron head from coming off.
Arrow heads are barbed, and are fastened to their shafts with
sinews, and a kind of glue, which is apt to dissolve at a moderate
temperature.

Anything lost in a Yankton camp, may be recovered
by hiring a soldier to cry the loss, as described in the text.

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The lodge of the Grand Medicine. The
Grand Medicine of the Dahcotahs is an institution in some
respects like Free Masonry. Its rites are celebrated in
secret, and it has its signs and insignia by which its members
are known to each other. It differs from Free Masonry, in
that women are among the initiated.

If the reader should think, that the depravity exhibited
by some of the characters in the Bois Brule unnatural,
we assure him that the incidents are mainly true. The outline
is consistent with the history of the Northwest; the embellishments
and filling up, are our own.