raded with the Tawney-faces who live beyond the salt-lake, and
that the prairies are now the hunting grounds of the Big-knives!"

"It is true, as I hear, also, from the hunters and trappers on La
Platte. Though it is with the Frenchers, and not with the men who claim
to own the Mexicos, that my people have bargained."

"And warriors are going up the Long-river, to see that they have not
been cheated, in what they have bought?"

"Ay, that is partly true, too, I fear; and it will not be long before an
accursed band of choppers and loggers will be following on their heels,
to humble the wilderness which lies so broad and rich on the western
banks of the Mississippi, and then the land will be a peopled desert,
from the shores of the main sea to the foot of the Rocky Mountains;
fill'd with all the abominations and craft of man, and stript of the
comforts and loveliness it received from the hands of the Lord!"

"And where were the chiefs of the Pawnee-Loups, when this bargain was
made?" suddenly demanded the youthful warrior, a look of startling
fierceness gleaming, at the same instant, athwart his dark visage. "Is a
nation to be sold like the skin of a beaver?"

"Right enough--right enough, and where were truth and honesty, also?
But might is right, according to the fashions of the 'arth; and what
the strong choose to do, the weak must call justice. If the law of
the Wahcondah was as much hearkened to, Pawnee, as the laws of the
Long-knives, your right to the prairies would be as good as that of the
greatest chief in the settlements to the house which covers his head."

"The skin of the traveller is white," said the young native, laying a
finger impressively on the hard and wrinkled hand of the trapper. "Does
his heart say one thing and his tongue another?"

"The Wahcondah of a white man has ears, and he shuts them to a lie.
Look at my head; it is like a frosted pine, and must soon be laid in the
ground. Why then should I wish to meet the Great Spirit, face to face,
while his countenance is dark upon me."

The Pawnee gracefully threw his shield over one shoulder, and placing
a hand on his chest, he bent his head, in deference to the grey locks
exhibited by the trapper; after which his eye became more steady, and
his countenance less fierce. Still he maintained every appearance of a
distrust and watchfulness that were rather tempered and subdued, than
forgotten. When this equivocal species of amity was established betw