the brightest civilization and the darkest barbarism: from the
scholar-soldier Montcalm and his no less accomplished aide-de-camp; from
Levis, conspicuous for graces of person; from a throng of courtly young
officers, who would have seemed out of place in that wilderness had they
not done their work so well in it; from these to the foulest man eating
savage of the uttermost northwest.

Of Indian allies there were nearly two thousand. One of their tribes,
the Iowas, spoke a language which no interpreter understood; and they
all bivouacked where they saw fit: for no man could control them. "I see
no difference," says Bougainville, "in the dress, ornaments, dances, and
songs of the various western nations. They go naked, excepting a strip
of cloth passed through a belt, and paint themselves black, red, blue,
and other colors. Their heads are shaved and adorned with bunches of
feathers, and they wear rings of brass wire in their ears. They wear
beaver-skin blankets, and carry lances, bows and arrows, and quivers
made of the skins of beasts. For the rest they are straight, well made,
and generally very tall. Their religion is brute paganism. I will say it
once for all, one must be the slave of these savages, listen to them day
and night, in council and in private, whenever the fancy takes them, or
whenever a dream, a fit of the vapors, or their perpetual craving for
brandy, gets possession of them; besides which they are always wanting
something for their equipment, arms, or toilet, and the general of the
army must give written orders for the smallest trifle,--an eternal,
wearisome detail, of which one has no idea in Europe."

It was not easy to keep them fed. Rations would be served to them for a
week; they would consume them in three days, and come for more. On one
occasion they took the matter into their own hands, and butchered and
devoured eighteen head of cattle intended for the troops; nor did any
officer dare oppose this "St. Bartholomew of the oxen," as Bougainville
calls it. "Their paradise is to be drunk," says the young officer. Their
paradise was rather a hell; for sometimes, when mad with brandy, they
grappled and tore each other with their teeth like wolves. They were
continually "making medicine," that is, consulting the Manitou, to whom
they hung up offerings, sometimes a dead dog, and sometimes the
belt-cloth which formed their only garment.

The Mission Indians were better allies than these heathen of the