ind eyes, and hear his firm voice directing me at the last.

The Coeurs d'Alene (pointed hearts, or hearts of arrows--flint)[1]
were so called from their determined resistance to having the white men
come among them. They did not desire to have one of the Hudson Bay
Company's posts upon their land, although the other tribes favored their
establishment among them, wishing to barter their skins and obtain
fire-arms; but said, that, if the white men saw their country, they
would want to take it from them, it was so beautiful.

Father Joseph was their interpreter in the negotiations between them
and the United States Government. They attacked Col. Steptoe, while he
was passing through their territory, because they had heard that the
white men were going to build a road which would drive away the deer and
the buffalo. It was explained to them, that, although this was so, other
advantages would more than compensate for it. This was beyond their
comprehension. To them, the advantages of civilization bore no
comparison to the charm of their free, roving life. When the army
officers entered the Coeur d'Alene country, they declared that no
conception of heaven could surpass the beauty of its exquisite lakes,
embosomed in the forest. This tribe held firm against all propositions
of the government to treat with them, until Donati's comet appeared in
1858; when, supposing it to be a great fiery broom sent to sweep them
from the earth, they accepted a treaty.

The "Battle of Four Lakes" was fought in this country. An old man whom
we met at the fort in Walla Walla, who saw this battle, gave us some
account of it. The lakes are surrounded with rocks covered with pine.
Beyond them is a great rolling country of grassy hills. For about two
miles, he said, this open ground was all alive with the wildest, most
fantastic figures of mounted Indians, with painted horses, having
eagle-feathers braided into their tails and manes; each Indian fighting
separately on his own account. He described to us the appearance of the
war chief as he rode to battle, his own head hidden by a wolf's head,
with stiff, sharp ears standing erect, ornamented with bears' claws, and
under it a circlet of feathers. From this head depended a long train of
feathers that floated down his back; the loss of which would be the loss
of his honor, and as great a disaster to him as, to a Chinaman, the loss
of his cue. His war-horse was painted, as well as his own person, and