thers, for
they are great warriors, and can beat their enemies with beautiful blue
fires from the heavens. The Arrapahoes know all; they area wise people.
They will take Owato Wanisha to their own tribe, that he may show his
skill to them, and make them warriors. He shall be fed with the fittest
and sweetest dogs. He will become a great warrior among the Arrapahoes.
So wish our prophets. I obey the will of the prophets and of the
nation."

"But," answered I, "my Manitou will not hear me if I am a slave. The
Pale-face Manitou has ears only for free warriors. He will not lend me
his fires unless space and time be my own."

The chief interrupted me:--"Owato Wanisha is not a slave, nor can he be
one. He is with his good friends, who will watch over him, light his
fire, spread their finest blankets in his tent, and fill it with the
best game of the prairie. His friends love the young chief, but he must
not escape from them, else the evil spirit would make the young
Arrapahoes drunk as a beastly Crow, and excite them in their folly to
kill the Pale-faces."

As nothing could be attempted for the present, we submitted to our fate,
and were conducted by a long and dreary journey to the eastern shores of
the Rio Colorado of the West, until at last we arrived at one of the
numerous and beautiful villages of the Arrapahoes. There we passed the
winter in a kind of honourable captivity. An attempt to escape would
have been the signal of our death, or, at least, of a harsh captivity.
We were surrounded by vast sandy deserts, inhabited by the Clubs
(Piuses), a cruel race of people, some of them cannibals. Indeed, I may
as well here observe that most of the tribes inhabiting the Colorado are
men-eaters, even including the Arrapahoes, on certain occasions. Once
we fell in with a deserted camp of Club-men, and there we found the
remains of about twenty bodies, the bones of which had been picked with
apparently as much relish as the wings of a pheasant would have been by
a European epicure. This winter passed gloomily enough, and no wonder.
Except a few beautiful groves, found here and there, like the oases in
the sands of the Sahara, the whole country is horribly broken and
barren. Forty miles above the Gulf of California, the Colorado ceases
to be navigable, and presents from its sources, for seven hundred miles,
nothing but an uninterrupted series of noisy and tremendous cataracts,
bordered on each side by a chain of pe