boasting of their own deeds or those of their fathers. One young man who had not yet been in battle told of killing a bear; this made another young man laugh, and then all the Indians frowned terribly. To think that a young man should so far forget himself as to laugh in council!
Nearly all the speeches were mournful, sad, and pathetic, but some very fine things were said. As of old, all their invectives were hurled at their hereditary enemy. One old man said, " The whites were as the ocean, strong and aggressive; while the red men were as the sand, silent, helpless, tossed about, run upon, and swallowed up." He was the only one that stood up tall and talked like a reasonable man. He wore a robe of panther skins thrown back from his shoulders.
I saw that even these few surviving people would not die in silence. They were as a wounded serpent that could yet strike if a foot was set in reach.
To me all this was sad beyond recital. What had these people seen, endured, felt, suffered in all the years of my absence ! And the end was not yet.
The struggles of many years were recounted many times, by each man telling the part he had borne in the battles, and from an Indian's standpoint it looked sad enough. The old savage spoken of had not much to say of himself, but now and then his long fingers-would point to scars on his naked breast, when alluding to some battle.
"Once," said he, in conclusion, u we were so many
