n: what can we say? The casket in which Nature sealed
that brain, and in which Nature's great step-sister, Death, finally laid
it away, has never fallen into the delighted fingers--and the remarkable
fineness of its texture will never kindle admiration in the triumphant
eyes--of those whose scientific hunger drives them to dig for _crania
Americana_; nor yet will all their learned excavatings ever draw forth
one of those pale souvenirs of mortality with walls of shapelier contour
or more delicate fineness, or an interior of more admirable
spaciousness, than the fair council-chamber under whose dome the mind
of Lufki-Humma used, about two centuries ago, to sit in frequent
conclave with high thoughts.

"I have these facts," it was Agricola Fusilier's habit to say, "by
family tradition; but you know, sir, h-tradition is much more authentic
than history!"

Listening Crane, the tribal medicine-man, one day stepped softly into
the lodge of the giant chief, sat down opposite him on a mat of plaited
rushes, accepted a lighted calumet, and, after the silence of a decent
hour, broken at length by the warrior's intimation that "the ear of
Raging Buffalo listened for the voice of his brother," said, in effect,
that if that ear would turn toward the village play-ground, it would
catch a murmur like the pleasing sound of bees among the blossoms of the
catalpa, albeit the catalpa was now dropping her leaves, for it was the
moon of turkeys. No, it was the repressed laughter of squaws, wallowing
with their young ones about the village pole, wondering at the
Natchez-Tchoupitoulas child, whose eye was the eye of the panther, and
whose words were the words of an aged chief in council.

There was more added; we record only enough to indicate the direction of
Listening Crane's aim. The eye of Raging Buffalo was opened to see a
vision: the daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in
many-colored robes of shining feathers crossed and recrossed with
girdles of serpent-skins and of wampum, her feet in quilled and painted
moccasins, her head under a glory of plumes, the carpet of
buffalo-robes about her throne covered with the trophies of conquest,
and the atmosphere of her lodge blue with the smoke of embassadors'
calumets; and this extravagant dream the capricious chief at once
resolved should eventually become reality. "Let her be taken to the
village temple," he said to his prime-minister, "and be fed by warriors
on the flesh of