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The next morning we started, the chief and I riding close together and speaking of the Shoshones. We exchanged our knives as a token of friendship, and when we parted, he assembled all his men and made the following speech: "The young chief of the Shoshones Is returning to his brave people across the rugged mountains.
I have stated that upon the resolution of the Shoshones to unite the tribes, I had despatched my old servant to Monterey, and Gabriel to the nearest Apache village. This last had found a numerous party of that tribe on the waters of the Colorado of the West, and was coming in the direction which I had myself taken, accompanied by the whole party.
All these nomadic communities joined them, and they moved together southward, till they reached at last the lodges of the long-sought Horse Indians. They found them in the extremity of distress and terror. Their camp resounded with howls and wailings; and not without cause, for the Snakes, or Shoshones, a formidable people living farther westward, had lately destroyed most of their tribe.
"Would they not like better to barter them with you, who are so near to them, for good food to sustain them and their children during the winter to keep alive their squaws and their old men during the long snow and the dreary moons of darkness and gloom? "Now if the Shoshones had corn and tobacco to give for furs, they would become rich.
It consisted of fifty well-armed Shoshones and fifty-four Mexicans from the coast, almost all of them sons of English or American settlers. Early in the morning we entered into what had been, a few days before, a pretty little town. It was now nothing but a heap of ruins, among which a few tents had been spread for night shelter.
My mind reverted to the happy scenes of my early youth, when I had a mother, and played so merrily among the golden grapes of sunny France, and when later I wandered with my father in the Holy land, in Italy and Egypt. I also thought of the Shoshones, of Roche and Gabriel, and I sighed. It was a moral agony; for the physical pain had subsided, and my leg was almost benumbed by paralysis.
"The Shoshones knew this a long time ago; they are brave, but they have no wealth; and if they still keep their superiority, it is because their enemies are at this time awed by the strength and the cunning of their warriors. But the Shoshones, to keep their ground, will some day be obliged to sleep always on their borders, to repel their enemies. They will be too busy to fish and to hunt.
I would have added, poor me! but the fatal news brought had so excited me, that I had but few thoughts to give to pleasure and to love. My immediate return was a sacred duty, and, besides, the Shoshones expected me to join with them on my first war-path.
What were the Crows before the coming of the white men, on the shores of the Buona Ventura? They had no country of their own, for one part of it had been taken by the Black-feet, and the other by the Arrapahoes and the Shoshones. Then the Crows were like doves hunted by the hawks of the mountains.
The young man bowed, and as the venerable chief was stooping to put the coronet upon his head, he started back and, to the astonishment of all, refused the premium. "Chiefs, warriors, elders of the Shoshones, pardon me! You know the good which I have done, but you know not in what I have erred.
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