out. The jurisdiction of the Chiefs also ranges over such matters as
the considering of applications from members of the various tribes for
licensing the sale to whites of timber, stone, or other valuable deposit,
with which the property of such applicants may be enriched; and they
likewise treat with applications for relief from members of the tribes,
whom physical incapacity debars from earning living, or who have been
reduced to an abject state of poverty and indigence; and have authority
to supplement the interest-annuities of such, should they see fit,
with suitable amounts.

The silent adjudging of a question is something abhorrent to the genius
of the Indian, and is in reality unknown. Dishonouring thus the custom,
he can grandly repudiate the contemptuous epithet of "voting machine;"
so unsparingly directed against, and pitilessly fastening upon, certain
ignoble legislators among ourselves. The manner of proceeding that
obtained with the Ojibways was somewhat different from the practice I have
detailed, and I allude to it now, because the tribe of the Delawares,
who are now treated as an off-shoot of the Oneidas, and are merged with
their kin in the Six Nations, belonged originally to the Ojibways. With
them the decision was come to according to the opinions expressed by the
majority of the speakers--a plan resolving itself into the system of a
show of hands (or a show of _tongues_, which shall it be?) it having
been customary for all who proposed to pass upon a measure to speak as
well. The issue upheld by the greater number of hands shown, naturally,
as with us, succeeded. Where a measure, in the progress of discussion,
proved unpopular, it was dropped, an arrangment which should convey a
wise hint to certain bodies I wot of.

It will be readily gathered from what has been said, that the method of
voting, in order to establish what is the judgment of the greater number,