y the
salt-water of the sunrise and the salt-water of the sunset. These are
the Comanches, a powerful nation. The Comanches even now have a
Shoshone heart, a Shoshone tongue. Owato Wanisha has been with them; he
says they are friends, and have not forgotten that they are the children
of the Great Serpent.

"Long, long while afterwards, yet not long enough that it should escape
the memory and the records of our holy men, some other of our children,
hearing of the power of the Comanches, of their wealth, of their
beautiful country, determined also to leave us and spread to the south.
These are the Apaches. From the top of the big mountains, always
covered with snow, they look towards the bed of the sun. They see the
green grass of the prairie below them, and afar the blue salt-water.
Their houses are as numerous as the stars in heaven, their warriors as
thick as the shells in the bottom of our lakes. They are brave; they
are feared by the Pale-faces,--by all; and they, too, know that we are
their fathers; their tongue is our tongue; their Manitou our Manitou,
their heart a portion of our heart; and never has the knife of a
Shoshone drunk the blood of an Apache, nor the belt of an Apache
suspended the scalp of a Shoshone.

"And afterwards, again, more of our children left us. But that time
they left us because we were angry. They were a few families of chiefs
who had grown strong and proud. They wished to lord over our wigwams,
and we drove them away, as the panther drives away her cubs, when their
claws and teeth have been once turned against her. These are the
Arrapahoes. They are strong and our enemies, yet they are a noble
nation. I have in my lodge twenty of their scalps; they have many of
ours. They fight by the broad light of the day, with the lance, bow,
and arrows; they scorn treachery. Are they not, although rebels and
unnatural children, still the children the Shoshones? Who ever heard of
the Arrapahoes entering the war-path in night? No one! They are no
Crows, no Umbiquas, no Flat-heads! They can give death, they know how
to receive it,--straight and upright, knee to knee, breast to breast,
and their eye drinking the glance of their foe.

"Well, these Arrapahoes are our neighbours; often, very often, too much
so (as many of our widows can say), when they unbury their tomahawk and
enter the war-path against the Shoshones. Why; can two suns light the
same prairie, or two male eagles cover th