ere too proud to work. An old chief answered for the whole
tribe.

"Nanawa Ashta is a great chief; he is a brave! The Manitou speaks
softly to his ears, and tells him the secret which makes the heart of a
warrior big or small; but Nanawa has a pale face--his blood is a strange
blood, although his heart is ever with his red friends. It is only the
white Manitou that speaks to him, and how could the white Manitou know
the nature of the Indians? He has not made them; he don't call them to
him; he gives them nothing; he leaves them poor and wretched; he keeps
all for the pale faces.

"It is right he should do so. The panther will not feed the young of
the deer, nor will the hawk sit upon the eggs of the dove. It is life,
it is order, it is nature. Each has his own to provide for and no more.
Indian corn is good; tobacco is good, it gladdens the heart of the old
men when they are in sorrow; tobacco is the present of chiefs to chiefs.
The calumet speaks of war and death; it discourses also of peace and
friendship. The Manitou made the tobacco expressly for man--it is good.

"But corn and tobacco must be taken from the earth; they must be watched
for many moons, and nursed like children. This is work fit only for
squaws and slaves. The Shoshones are warriors and free; if they were to
dig in the ground, their sight would become weak, and their enemies
would say they were moles and badgers.

"Does the just Nanawa wish the Shoshones to be despised by the Crows or
the horsemen of the south! No! he had fought for them before he went to
see if the bones of his fathers were safe: and since his return, has he
not given to them rifles and powder, and long nets to catch the salmon
and plenty of iron to render their arrows feared alike by the buffaloes
and the Umbiquas?

"Nanawa speaks well, for he loves his children: but the spirit that
whispers to him is a pale-face spirit, that cannot see under the skin of
a red-warrior; it is too tough: nor in his blood: it is too dark.

"Yet tobacco is good, and corn too. The hunters of the Flat Heads and
Pierced Noses would come in winter to beg for it; their furs would make
warm the lodges of the Shoshones. And my people would become rich and
powerful; they would be masters of all the country, from the salt waters
to the big mountains; the deer would come and lick their hands, and the
wild horses would graze around their wigwams. 'Tis so that the pale
faces grow rich and strong