?" thought I. "No; they are not bound. There are
no signs of captivity either in their looks or gestures, and yet they
are Indians. Can they belong to the band, fighting against--?"

As I sat conjecturing, a hunter passed near me.

"Who are these Indians?" I asked, indicating the group.

"Delawares; some Shawnees."

These, then, were the celebrated Delawares, descendants of that great
tribe who, on the Atlantic shores, first gave battle to the pale-faced
invader. Theirs had been a wonderful history. War their school, war
their worship, war their pastime, war their profession. They are now
but a remnant. Their story will soon be ended.

I rose up, and approached them with a feeling of interest. Some of them
were sitting around the fire, smoking out of curiously-carved pipes of
the red claystone. Others strode back and forth with that majestic gait
for which the forest Indian has been so much celebrated. There was a
silence among them that contrasted strangely with the jabbering kept up
by their Mexican allies. An occasional question put in a deep-toned,
sonorous voice, a short but emphatic reply, a guttural grunt, a
dignified nod, a gesture with the hand; and thus they conversed, as they
filled their pipe-bowls with the kini-kin-ik, and passed the valued
instruments from one to another.

I stood gazing upon these stoical sons of the forest with emotions
stronger than curiosity, as one contemplates for the first time an
object of which he has heard and read strange accounts. The history of
their wars and their wanderings were fresh in my memory. Before me were
the actors themselves, or types of them, in all their truthful reality,
in all their wild picturesqueness. These were the men who, driven from
their homes by the Atlantic border, yielded only to fate--to the destiny
of their race. Crossing the Appalachian range, they had fought their
way from home to home, down the steep sides of the Alleghany, along the
wooded banks of the Ohio, into the heart of the "Bloody Ground." Still
the pale-face followed on their track, and drove them onward, onward
towards the setting sun. Red wars, Punic faith, broken treaties, year
after year, thinned their ranks. Still, disdaining to live near their
white conquerors, they pushed on, fighting their way through tribes of
their own race and colour thrice their numbers! The forks of the Osage
became their latest resting-place. Here the usurper promised to
guarante