wings are feeble, he flies no more to the
field of blood. The Young Eagle feared nothing but shame, and he
said--

"'I see many men sit round a fire, I will go and see who they are!'

"He went. The Old Eagle looks at me as if he would say, 'Why went not
the chief warrior himself?' I will tell you. The Head Buffalo is a
head taller than the tallest man of his tribe. Can the moose crawl
into the fox's hole? Can the swan hide himself under a little leaf?
The Young Eagle was little, save in his soul. He was not full-grown,
save in his heart. He could go and not be seen or heard. He was the
cunning black-snake which creeps silently in the grass, and none
thinks him near till he strikes.

"He came back and told us there were many strange men a little way
before us whose faces were white, and who wore no skins, whose cabins
were white as the snow upon the Backbone of the Great Spirit (the
Alleghany Mountains), flat at the top, and moving with the wind like
the reeds on the bank of a river; that they did not talk like the
Walkullas, but spoke a strange tongue, the like of which he had never
heard before. Many of our warriors would have turned back to our own
lands. The Flying Squirrel said it was not cowardice to do so; but the
Head Buffalo never turns till he has tasted the blood of his foes. The
Young Eagle said he had eaten the bitter root and put on the new
moccasins, and had been made a man, and his father and the warriors
would cry shame on him if he took no scalp. Both he and the Head
Buffalo said they would go and attack the Walkullas and their friends
alone. The young warriors then said they would also go to the battle,
and with a great heart, as their fathers had done. Then the Shawanos
rushed upon their foes.

"The Walkullas fell before us like rain in the summer months. We were
as a fire among rushes. We went upon them when they were unprepared,
when they were as children; and for a while the Great Spirit gave them
into our hands. But a power rose up against us that we could not
withstand. The strange men came upon us armed with thunder and
lightning. Why delays my tongue to tell its story? Fathers, your sons
have fallen like the leaves of a forest-tree in a high wind, like the
flowers of spring after a frost, like drops of rain in the sturgeon
moon! Warriors, the sprouts which sprang up from the withered oaks
have perished, the young braves of our nation lie food for the eagle
and the wild-cat by the arm of th