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Kind and hospitable as they were, they refused three or four times to let us penetrate in this sanctum sanctorum, and of course we would not press them further. The Wakoes, or, to say better, their villages, are unknown, except to a few trappers and hunters, who will never betray the kind hospitality they have received by showing the road to them.
But who knows not the Wakoes? even children can go to their hospitable lodges." This episode is historical. In the early months of 1684, four vessels left La Rochelle, in France, for the colonization of the Mississippi, bearing two hundred and eighty persons. The expedition was commanded by La Salle, who brought with him his nephew, Moranget.
In the remarks which I am about to make relative to the Shoshones, I may as well observe that the same observations will equally apply to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, as they are but subdivisions and offsets from the original stock the Shoshones. The Wakoes, who have not yet been mentioned, or even seen, by any other travellers, I shall hereafter describe.
The next day we met with a band of Wakoes Indians, another subdivision of the Comanches or of the Apaches, and not yet seen or even mentioned by any traveller. They were all mounted upon fine tall horses, evidently a short time before purchased at the Mexican settlements, for some of them had their shoes still on their feet.
We had, during the last part of our journey, discovered the tops of three or four high mountains in the distance; we knew them to be "The Crows," by the description of them given to us by the Wakoes. Early the next morning we were awakened by the warbling of innumerable singing birds, perched among the bushes along the borders of the stream.
The mountains, the summits of which we had perceived the evening before, were now plainly visible, and answered to the descriptions of the Wakoes, as those in the neighbourhood of the narrows of the Red River. We now considered that we were near the end of our journey. That night we swallowed a very scanty supper, laid down to sleep, and dreamed of beaver tail and buffalo hump and tongues.
They were, however, sadly mistaken; when they made their attack, they were almost all cut to pieces, and the unburied bones of two hundred and forty Texans remain blanching in the prairie, as a monument of their own rascality and the prowess of the Wakoes.
On leaving the Wakoes, we thought that we could be not more than one hundred miles from the Comanche encampment. We had now ridden much more than that distance, and were still on the immense prairie.
Their children and grandchildren have formed a good and brave nation; they are paler than the Comanches, but their heart is all the same; and often in the hunting-grounds they join our hunters, partake of the same meals, and agree like brothers. These are the nation of the Wakoes, not far in the south, upon the trail of the Cross Timbers.
The mountains, the summits of which we had perceived the evening before were now plainly visible, and answered to the descriptions of the Wakoes as those in the neighbourhood of the narrows of the Red River. We now considered that we were near the end of our journey. That night we swallowed a very scanty supper, lay down to sleep, and dreamed of beaver-tail and buffalo-hump and tongues.
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