, there and elsewhere. Upon all their lands they formally gave
them leave to remain as long as suited their own good pleasure.

The affair, of course, furnished material for a solemn council. Under
the auspices of an officer of the United States their chiefs were
summoned, in the form befitting great occasions, to meet in the yard of
a Mr. P.A. Sarpy's log trading-house. They came in grand costume, moving
in their fantastic attire with so much _aplomb_ and genteel measure that
the stranger found it difficult not to believe them high-born gentlemen,
attending a fancy-dress ball. Their aristocratically thin legs, of which
they displayed fully the usual Indian proportion, aided this illusion.
There is something too at all times very mock-Indian in the theatrical
French millinery tie of the Pottawottomi turban; while it is next to
impossible for a sober white man, at first sight, to believe that the
red, green, black, blue, and yellow cosmetics, with which he sees such
grave personages so variously dotted, diapered, cancelled, and
arabesqued are worn by them in any mood but one of the deepest and most
desperate quizzing. From the time of their first squat upon the ground
to the final breaking up of the council circle they sustained their
characters with equal self-possession and address.

I will not take it upon myself to describe their order of ceremonies;
indeed, I ought not, since I have never been able to view the habits and
customs of our aborigines in any other light than that of a sorrowful
subject of jest. Besides, in this instance, the powwow and the expected
flow of turgid eloquence were both moderated probably by the conduct of
the entire transaction on temperance principles. I therefore content
myself with observing generally that the proceedings were such as in
every way became the dignity of the parties interested, and the
magnitude of the interests involved. When the red men had indulged to
satiety in tobacco-smoke from their peace-pipes, and in what they love
still better--their peculiar metaphoric rhodomontade, which, beginning
with the celestial bodies, and coursing downward over the grandest
sublunary objects, always managed to alight at last on their "Great
Father," Polk, and the tenderness with which his affectionate red
children regarded him. All the solemn funny fellows present, who played
the part of chiefs, signed formal articles of convention with their
unpronounceable names.

The renowned chief