n they built a great fire, and cutting the tendons of their captive's
wrists and feet, threw him in, and held him down with long poles
until he was burnt to death. He garnished his story with a great many
descriptive particulars much too revolting to mention. His features were
remarkably mild and open, without the fierceness of expression common
among these Indians; and as he detailed these devilish cruelties, he
looked up into my face with the same air of earnest simplicity which a
little child would wear in relating to its mother some anecdote of its
youthful experience.

Old Mene-Seela's lodge could offer another illustration of the ferocity
of Indian warfare. A bright-eyed, active little boy was living there.
He had belonged to a village of the Gros-Ventre Blackfeet, a small but
bloody and treacherous band, in close alliance with the Arapahoes. About
a year before, Kongra-Tonga and a party of warriors had found about
twenty lodges of these Indians upon the plains a little to the eastward
of our present camp; and surrounding them in the night, they butchered
men, women, and children without mercy, preserving only this little
boy alive. He was adopted into the old man's family, and was now fast
becoming identified with the Ogallalla children, among whom he mingled
on equal terms. There was also a Crow warrior in the village, a man of
gigantic stature and most symmetrical proportions. Having been taken
prisoner many years before and adopted by a squaw in place of a son whom
she had lost, he had forgotten his old national antipathies, and was now
both in act and inclination an Ogallalla.

It will be remembered that the scheme of the grand warlike combination
against the Snake and Crow Indians originated in this village; and
though this plan had fallen to the ground, the embers of the martial
ardor continued to glow brightly. Eleven young men had prepared
themselves to go out against the enemy. The fourth day of our stay in
this camp was fixed upon for their departure. At the head of this party
was a well-built active little Indian, called the White Shield, whom I
had always noticed for the great neatness of his dress and appearance.
His lodge too, though not a large one, was the best in the village,
his squaw was one of the prettiest girls, and altogether his dwelling
presented a complete model of an Ogallalla domestic establishment. I
was often a visitor there, for the White Shield being rather partial
to white men, u