aimed:

"Who are these robbers, these vagabonds, who keep calling to my chief
of Tuscaloosa, 'come out! come out!' with as little reverence as if he
were one of them? By the sun and moon, this insolence is no longer to
be borne! Let us cut them to pieces on the spot, and put an end to
their wickedness and tyranny!"

Uttering these words, he threw off his superb mantle of marten skins,
and seizing a bow from the hands of an attendant, drew an arrow to the
head, aiming at a group of Spaniards in the public square. But before
the arrow left the bow, a steel-clad cavalier, who had accompanied the
interpreter, with one thrust of his sword laid the Indian dead at his
feet. The son of the dead warrior, a vigorous young savage, sprang
forward and let fly upon the cavalier six or seven arrows, as fast as
he could draw them. But they all fell harmless from his armor. He then
seized a club and struck him three or four blows over the head with
such force that the blood gushed from beneath his casque.

All this was done in an instant, when the cavalier, recovering
from his surprise, with two sword-thrusts, laid the young warrior
dead in his blood by the side of his father. It seemed as though
instantaneously the war-whoop resounded from a thousand throats.

The concealed warriors, ten thousand in number, with hideous yells,
like swarming bees, rushed into the streets. De Soto had but two
hundred men to meet them. But these were all admirably armed, and most
of them protected by coats of mail. He immediately placed himself at
the head of his troops, and slowly retreating, fighting fiercely every
inch of the way, with his armored men facing the foe, succeeded in
withdrawing through the gate out upon the open plain, where his
horsemen could operate to better advantage. In the retreat five of the
Spaniards were killed and many severely wounded, De Soto being one of
the number.

The Indians came rushing out upon the plain in a tumultuous mass, with
yells of defiance and victory. But the dragoons soon regained their
horses, which had been tethered outside the walls, and whose bodies
were much protected from the arrows of the natives; and then, in a
terrific charge, one hundred steel-clad men, cutting to the right hand
and to the left, maddened by the treachery of which they had been the
victims, plunged into the densest masses of their foes, and every
sabre-blow was death to a half-naked Indian. The slaughter was awful.
Brave as the