No trace

and did the same on the opposite side. All was in vain. of their long-dreaded enemy was to be found. Concluding that he was drowned, they returned to their village, comforting themselves with the assurance that, although they had not got his scalp, he was at least dead, and they immediately sent out a war party to avenge the slaughter of their countrymen upon all and sundry of the Mandans. When night fell, the Four-Bears emerged from his hiding place, swam ashore, and commenced his homeward journey, guided by the north star. As in his approach, so in his retreat, he was obliged to travel only by night, and exhausted as he was by hunger, it is doubtful whether he could have reached home, had he not happened to fall upon the encampment of the Pawnee party, returning from their unsuccessful expedition. He very quietly helped himself to their best horse, and rode off undetected; for these wild warriors, so adroit in surprising others, seldom keep vigilant watch themselves. He was thus enabled to gain the Mandan village, where he arrived very nearly famished, but still elate and triumphant. From that time he began to recover his former spirits and energy; and the Pawnees suffered accordingly, till they sued for peace; which was kept inviolate for several years, when it was broken as shall appear hereafter.

There was a white captive in the family of Mah-to-khay To-pah; a captive in name only; for he was considered and treated as one of its members, and was, in habits and ideas, as perfect an Indian as ever ran under a buffalo robe. He had been captured at an early age from the frontier of Mexico, by the Camanches, sold by them to the Pawnees, and taken again from them by the Mandans. The color of his skin saved his life. He was about twenty years old when his parents, having at last discovered where he was, prevailed upon a reverend priest to go to the Mandan village and reclaim him. The youth, although he had not forgotten his family or his language, was deaf to the entreaties and arguments of the padre, and refused to leave his adopted brethren.

'Go, my son,' said the sire of Mah-to-khay To-pah, 'go. Your father has no other child. Go, and lay his gray hairs in the grave, and then return to us.'

'Go,' said his adopted mother. 'I have mourned for those to whom I have given suck, and my heart bleeds for your mother, who must now be an old woman, like me.'

4

'Go, my brother,' said the Four-Bears. The bad son can never become a successful hunter, or a brave warrior. The smiles of the Master of Breath are not for him, and his hair will never be gray.' 'The young man consented to go, though with tears. 'Take our brother,' said the Four-Bears, and be very kind to him, as we have been. We are a very foolish, ignorant people; not at all like you whites; but we have taught him all we knew. We have taught him to run, to ride, to draw the bow, to wield the lance, to guard against an enemy, to be faithful to his friends, and to speak the truth. All this will be of little use to him where he is going; for I am told the men with hats are a very bad people. He will be like a little child that is lost by his tribe. Father, I entreat you to take exceeding good care of him. He will live in our hearts, and if it be the will of

the Great Spirit that we should ever meet again, he will see that he holds the place of a son and a brother there. We shall keep fast hold of his heart, although far away. Let him not loosen his hold

on ours.'

Afterward the priest made an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Four-Bears, whose principal argument against Christianity was, that whereas all the Christians he had ever known were in the constant habit of taking the name of God in vain, it was impossible that they could love or respect him, and, not loving or respecting him, that they could not keep his commandments. Foiled on this point by the rude common sense of the barbarian, the priest began to reproach him with the cruelty of his people.

'You come to us, a stranger, and take away our brother,' said Mahto-khay To-pah.

Have we treated you cruelly?'

'No, I cannot say that you have. But then your treatment of your prisoners of war. You burn them at the stake.'

'Brother, whoever told you that, told you a lie !' replied the chief, indignantly. 'We never did. Whom the Mandans spare in battle, is safe for ever after. Other tribes may have abused their prisoners; we never did.'

You will not deny, resumed the priest, that you slaughter women and children, who neither have done nor can do you any injury?' 'If boys can do us no injury, they may do injury to our sons, when both shall have grown up to be men,' replied the chief. If women are not warriors, they can at least breed warriors. There were small policy in sparing them.'

'But why fight at all?' asked the priest. 'Is not the world wide enough for all? What is the use of war?'

Mah-to-khay To-pah was for a space mute with astonishment. Why do we go to war?' he at length replied. Why, what other employment is fit for a man? How is the Master of Life to distinguish us from women, if we do no more than they can do? Beside, are we not directed in our dreams, and instructed by our medicine men, to destroy those wicked Pawnees from the face of the earth? And how is a man to distinguish himself above his fellows, if we have no wars? Say no more against it, brother. It is the first sound that greets us in the cradle, and the last that ceases to ring in our ears when dying.'

In the winter of 182, a small party of traders and their followers crossed over from the sources of the St. Peters of the Mississippi to the Mandan villages, accompanied by an escort of twelve Yanktou Dahcotahs, at the head of whom was Wawnahtou, the ta-ko-dah of our hero, as before stated. The Mandans were then at peace with the Dahcotahs, so that Wawnahtou and his band were hospitably and kindly received, and they were also at peace with the Pawnees; but the latter were not on amicable terms with the tribe of their guests. The strangers were feasted and caressed, as usual, and then a separate dwelling was assigned them, and many speeches were made in the course of the evening. It so chanced that the noise occasioned by the festivity reached the ears of a roving party of forty Pawnees, who were hovering about the village for the purpose of stealing

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horses, and a spy was forthwith sent into the camp to learn the cause of the unwonted sounds which issued from the stranger's lodge. He fulfilled his mission, and returned to his chief, who thereupon held a council, in which it was resolved to enter the village and destroy the twelve Yanktous and their white companions. They argued that, however desirous the Mandans might be to conciliate the great Dahcotah tribe, they had yet suffered a great many injuries from them, and could not but be pleased if they, the Pawnees, took the shame and the trouble of killing twelve of their number off their hands. They counted upon nothing less than on meeting any opposition from their former enemies, or receiving any punishment at their hands. They waited, then, till day, when they should be able to distinguish their intended victims.

It was winter, and the snow was deep, and the horse-thieves were therefore on foot. The same reason would prevent their enemies from acting on horseback. Bows and arrows cannot well be used against the buffalo on foot. All parties interested were armed with guns, an article with which they were much more familiar than they had been a few years before. To attack the Dahcotahs in the village was therefore a dangerous measure for the Pawnees to adopt; should the Mandans join in the affray, their only chance of escape would be in speed of foot; and so it proved. Just after day-break the Pawnees entered the village, and fired into the stranger's lodge, and strange to say, though there were upward of thirty persons in it, not an individual of them received the least harm. The whites and Dahcotahs immediately sprang up, and the latter returned the fire.

The surprise had been complete; but Indians are never more prompt to act, in one way or another, than when taken by surprise. They make up their minds to fight or fly at once. In this instance, whether it was that the Mandans thought themselves attacked, whether they were actuated by ancient hatred of the Pawnees, or whether through indignation at so flagrant a violation of their hospitality, they turned out against the invaders to a man. These last broke, fled,

and scattered at once, with a yell of despair, and fast and hotly did upward of three hundred men urge the pursuit. There is a good deal of variety in an Indian fight. The combatants fired and loaded as they ran, with inconceivable dexterity. A shout of exultation

arose, whenever a shot told, blending with the joyous laugh of the younger Mandans, who enjoyed this hunting of men in the same spirit with which school-boys follow a foot-ball, as if it were the finest sport imaginable. If it was sport to them, however, it was death to the Pawnees, many of whom were soon wounded and slain; but hurt or unhurt, no cry escaped from them.

Mah-to-khay To-pah and Wawnahtou led and animated the pursuit, which had now been followed two leagues, and would have been much more lively but for the exertions of the Pawnee chief, who repeatedly brought his braves to a stand, cheering them by voice and example, and beating back the first and foremost. By this time he had paid the penalty of his daring. His left hand was shattered by a ball, and he threw away the gun which he could no longer use. A second bullet passed through his thigh; but still he kept on, occasionally halting to rest, and to exhort his men to fight well, and die

bravely. A grim, gaunt warrior was he, yclept the Wild Horse, with long matted elf locks hanging about his cheeks, and of gigantic stature. The Four-Bears pressed hard upon him, notwithstanding the exhortations of Wawnahtou to beware of a pistol which the wounded chief concealed under his robe. His blood was up, and he was about to close with the Pawnee, when a bullet from the pistol of the latter struck him in the forehead, and he fell senseless and motionless to the ground. Quick as the lightning leaves the cloud, before the smoke of the pistol had cleared away, the knife of his ta-ko-dah was sheathed in the body of the Wild Horse, whose scalp was torn from his head in less time than it would take to repeat the circumstance. The hand was well accustomed to the work. The chase was now resumed with redoubled vigor; for Wawnahtou was inflamed to fury, and continued two leagues farther, when the remnant of the Pawnees were suffered to depart without farther molestation. Full half their number had fallen, and it was supposed that not one of them escaped without a wound. Of the pursuers, but two or three were wounded, and that but slightly.

On their return to the spot where the Mandan and the Pawnee chief had fallen, the victorious savages found the latter still alive. He had filled his pipe, struck a light with his pistol, and was now sitting up, smoking, a ghastly spectacle, covered with blood from head to foot. Forthwith they began to taunt and revile him. This is the chief,' said one, who led his young men into a trap, from which there was no escape.'

It is all the better for the wolves and ravens,' said another. 'Ho, Pawnee ! - a hundred widows of your tribe will be cursing you tomorrow.' 'You lie, Mandan dog!' replied the Pawnee, nothing daunted. 'While they can show two scalps won for one lost by me, they will weep for my death. Who stole your horses last fall? To a second he said: 'Your father's scalp is drying in the smoke of my lodge.' To a third: Your wife, whom we took prisoner and slew. Fifteen of my young men

1

He did not live to finish the sentence. The wronged and enraged husband terminated his sufferings with a single stroke of his tomahawk, and this was perhaps the motive of the Pawnee hero's vaunts.

Mah-to-khay To-pah still breathed. The ball had glanced upon his skull, and passed over his head; but the concussion on the brain had been severe, and it was long before he awoke to consciousness, or his tribe ceased to mourn the loss of their bravest man. No song of triumph was raised for the slaughter of the treacherous Pawnees. On the contrary, it was a month before the men washed the black from their faces, or the women ceased to mangle themselves and weep. As for Wawnahtou, he vowed a vow, that in testimony of his sorrow for the loss of his ta-ko-dah, he would give away all he possessed, and absent himself from his tribe for a whole year. He kept his word. He gave away his dresses, his flags, his medals, his gun, his horses, all he had; not excepting his favorite wife, who had been for fifteen years the partner of his bosom.

The Four-Bears nevertheless outlived all who mourned him as one dead. Two years ago, the man who had five times endured the tortures of the Feast of the Willow Leaf, who had seemed proof to

lead and steel, might have been seen exhorting his afflicted and spiritbroken tribe to submit patiently to the displeasure of the Great Spirit, manifested in the dreadful visitation of the small-pox; but they gave him credit neither for his courage nor his pious resignation, and gave no heed to his exhortations; for they believed that he bore a charmed life. Not one of his hearers but had lost what was nearest and dearest, and they sat staring at the dead and the dying, with the stony eyes of despair; wishing for death, and complaining of his delay. It was in vain that he exhorted them to fly from the scene of the contagion, to regions where they might revive the ancient glories of the nation. It was in vain that he told them that none but old women would stay to endure what might be averted by resistance or flight. It was in vain that he reminded them of their former fame. They pointed to the bones that were bleaching around them, and to which their apathy had denied the rites of sepulture, and answered: 'Shall we leave these, to go into a foreign land?' Their hearts were dead within them, and they refused to be comforted or encouraged. One old man, in answer to his impassioned declamation, replied: What avails it now, Mah-to-khay Topah, to speak of the glories of days gone by? The world knows them, and their memory can never die; but they can return no more! What avails it to taunt us with cowardice? Our enemies can bear witness that we are neither children nor old women; but we cannot strive with the Master of Breath. To what purpose should we fly, since the wrath of God can follow, and find us every where? No, Mah-tokhay To-pah; urge it no more. Here our ancestors were buried; here we will die, and our dust shall commingle with the same clay.'

6

The pestilence stalked through the tribe with giant strides. Hundreds perished in a day. Many slew themselves, to escape the inevitable agony. This the Four-Bears disdained. 'I have never shrunk from mortal man,' he said, and I will not now, with fifty snows on my head, offend the Master of Life by refusing to submit to his will. If all the rest of the Mandans have become children, my heart at least is strong.' And when the last seven surviving families had immolated themselves, the chief, ' toujours fidele,' might be seen and heard chanting their requiem, and his own death-song. The next morning, the Last of the Mandans crowned the bloody heap, a festering corse.

WE might have made this tale more interesting, by making our actors speak a different language, and by mixing a little love with our war and blood-shed. We have not done so, because the FourBears, though he had many wives, never was in love in his life, beyond reason; and Indians should be described as they are, and not as we could wish to have them. Our Indians are Indians; not copper colored Lovelaces and Grandisons. No other person, excepting Mr. Catlin, knows them so well. We might have been more minute in our descriptions; but our limits did not permit; and beside, the topography of the country has been described a hundred times already, far better than we could do it. We hope these excuses will be found satisfactory. WETSHASHTSHAHTOPEE TSHEESTIN TSHAY HASKAH.