nfluence to physical causes, and to deeds in arms, and those who
had become distinguished rather for their wisdom than for their services
in the field. The former was by far the most numerous and the most
important class. They were men of stature and mien, whose stern
countenances were often rendered doubly imposing by those evidences of
their valour, which had been roughly traced on their lineaments by the
hands of their enemies. That class, which had gained its influence by
a moral ascendency was extremely limited. They were uniformly to be
distinguished by the quick and lively expression of their eyes, by the
air of distrust that marked their movements, and occasionally by the
vehemence of their utterance in those sudden outbreakings of the
mind, by which their present consultations were, from time to time,
distinguished.

In the very centre of a ring, formed by these chosen counsellors, was
to be seen the person of the disquieted, but seemingly calm, Mahtoree.
There was a conjunction of all the several qualities of the others in
his person and character. Mind as well as matter had contributed to
establish his authority. His scars were as numerous and deep as those of
the whitest head in his nation; his limbs were in their greatest vigour;
his courage at its fullest height. Endowed with this rare combination of
moral and physical influence, the keenest eye in all that assembly was
wont to lower before his threatening glance. Courage and cunning had
established his ascendency, and it had been rendered, in some degree,
sacred by time. He knew so well how to unite the powers of reason and
force, that in a state of society, which admitted of a greater display
of his energies, the Teton would in all probability have been both a
conqueror and a despot.

A little apart from the gathering of the band, was to be seen a set of
beings of an entirely different origin. Taller and far more muscular in
their persons, the lingering vestiges of their Saxon and Norman ancestry
were yet to be found beneath the swarthy complexions, which had been
bestowed by an American sun. It would have been a curious investigation,
for one skilled in such an enquiry, to have traced those points of
difference, by which the offspring of the most western European was
still to be distinguished from the descendant of the most remote
Asiatic, now that the two, in the revolutions of the world, were
approximating in their habits, their residence, and not a