urn to the place
where the Comanche herds of horse were grazing, and to take them, to
escape their foes. So far, all was right; it was nothing more than what
the Comanches would have done themselves in the land of the Pawnees; but
what had angered the Comanche warriors was, that the hundred horses thus
borrowed in necessity, had never been returned, although the party had
arrived at the village two moons ago.

When the Pawnees heard that we had no other causes for complaint, they
shewed, by their expressions of friendship, that the ties of long
brotherhood were not to be so easily broken; and indeed the Pawnees had,
some time before, sent ten of their men with one hundred of their finest
horses, to compensate for those which they had taken and rather
ill-treated, in their hurried escape from the Kiowas. But they had
taken a different road from that by which we had come, and consequently
we had missed them. Of course, the council broke up, and the Indians,
who had remained on the other side of the river, were invited in the
village to partake of the Pawnee hospitality.

Gabriel and I soon accosted the strangely-dressed foreigners. In fact,
we were seeking each other, and I learned that they had been a long time
among the Pawnees, and would have passed over to the Comanches, in order
to confer with me on certain political matters, had it not been that
they were aware of the great antipathy the chiefs of that tribe
entertained against the inhabitants of the United States.

The facts were as follows:--These people were emissaries of the Mormons,
a new sect which had sprung up in the States, and which was rapidly
increasing in numbers. This sect had been created by a certain Joseph
Smith. Round the standard of this bold and ambitious leader, swarms of
people crowded from every part, and had settled upon a vast extent of
ground on the eastern shores of the Mississippi, and there established a
civil, religious, and military power, as anomalous as it was dangerous
to the United States. In order to accomplish his ulterior views, this
modern apostle wished to establish relations of peace and friendship
with all the Indians in the great western territories, I had for that
purpose sent messengers among the various tribes east of the Rocky
Mountains. Having also learned, by the St. Louis trappers, that
strangers, long established among the Shoshones of the Pacific Ocean,
were now residing among the Comanches, Smith had ord