two little frisky boys, leaping and
whooping. They were clad gracefully in garments of fine deerskin, and
each wore a miniature feather upon his head, marking them as children of
a distinguished warrior.

They danced nimbly around their father, while he stood with all the
dignity of a buck elk, viewing the landscape reddened by sunrise and the
dwellers therein, the old and the new, the red and the white. He noticed
that they were still unmingled; the river divided them.

At last he took the dancing little embryo warriors one in either hand,
and lifted them to his majestic shoulders. There he placed them
in perfect poise. His haughty spirit found a moment's happiness in
fatherhood.

Suddenly Tawasuota set the two boys on the ground again, and signed
to them to enter the teepee. Apparently all was quiet. The camps and
villages of the Minnesota reservation were undisturbed, so far as he
could see, save by the awakening of nature; and the early risers among
his people moved about in seeming security, while the smoke of their
morning fires arose one by one into the blue. Still the warrior gazed
steadily westward, up the river, whence his quick ear had caught the
faint but ominous sound of a distant war-whoop.

The ridge beyond the Wahpeton village bounded the view, and between this
point and his own village were the agency buildings and the traders'
stores. The Indian's keen eye swept the horizon, and finally alighted
once more upon the home of his new neighbor across the river, the
flaxen-haired white man with many children, who with his white squaw
and his little ones worked from sunrise to sunset, much like the beaver
family.

Ah! the distant war-whoop once more saluted his ear, but this time
nearer and more distinct.

"What! the Rice Creek band is coming in full war-paint! Can it be
another Ojibway attack? Ugh, ugh! I will show their warriors again this
day what it is to fight!" he exclaimed aloud.

The white traders and Government employees, those of them who were up
and about, heard and saw the advancing column of warriors. Yet they
showed no sign of anxiety or fear. Most of them thought that there might
be some report of Ojibways coming to attack the Sioux,--a not uncommon
incident,--and that those warriors were on their way to the post to
replenish their powder-horns. A few of the younger men were delighted
with the prospect of witnessing an Indian fight.

On swept the armed band, in numbers increasing at