NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN     S.       225

  "Some of the speeches of Shenandoah, a celebrated
Oneida chief, contain the truest touches of natural eC]o
quence. He lived to a great age; and in his last orae
tion in council, he opened with the following sublime
and beautiful sentence: ' Brothers-I am an aged heme
lock. The winds of a hundred winters have whistled
through my branches, and I am dead at the top.' Ev-
ery reader who has seen a tall hemlock, with a dry and
leafless top surmounting its dark green foliage, will feel
the force of the'simile. I I am dead at the top.' His memo-
ry, and all the vigorous powers of youth, had departed
for ever.
  " Not less felicitous was the close of a speech made by
Pushmataha, a venerable chief of a western tribe, at a
council held, we believe, in Washington, many years
since. In alluding to his extreme age, and to the proba-
bility that he might not even survive the journey back to
his tribe, he said: ' My children will walk through the
forests, and the Great Spirit will whistle in the tree-
tops, and the flowers will spring up in the trails-but
Pushmataha will hear not-he wilt see the flowers no
more. He will be gone. His people will know that he
is dead. The news will come to their ears, as the sound
of the fall of a mighty oak in the stillness of the
woods.'
  "9.The most powerful tribes have been destroyed; and
as Sadekanatie expressed it, 'Strike at the root, and
when the trunk shall be cut down, the branches shall
fall of course.' The trunk has fallen, the branches are
slowly withering, and shortly the question, Who is
there to mourn for Logan, may be made of the whole
race, and find not a sympathizing reply.
  "Their actions may outlive, but their oratory, wve
think, must survive their fate. It contains many attri-
butes of true eloquence. With a language too barren,
and minds too free for the rules of rhetoric, they still at-
tained the power of touching the feeling, and a sublimi-
ty of style which rivals the highest productions of their
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