my children."

Gray Cloud quailed, thinking that he did not want to bring that back to
his people. But perhaps there was some good word he could tell them.

"How may we escape this evil, Father Turtle?" he asked.

"This evil is from the pale eyes."

At this, Gray Cloud turned to stare at the pale eyes man, who looked sad
now, even sombre. Who was this man, and why was he here?

"The pale eyes and my children cannot live on the same land," said the
Turtle. "Because they do not live in the same way. Most pale eyes do not
wish harm to my children, but they do harm by coming into the land where
my children dwell."

Gray Cloud at once grasped what the Turtle spoke of. Generations of Sauk
and their allies, the Fox, had lived in towns at the joining of the Rock
River and the Great River, where in summer they raised corn, beans,
squash and pumpkins. Each fall they would leave their towns and fields
for winter hunting camps in the West. But the pale eyes warriors, the
long knives, had been telling the Sauk and Fox that they must give up
all their land on the east side of the Great River, even their principal
town, Saukenuk, and move forever west, into the Ioway country. And the
war chief Black Hawk had defied the long knives, leading his people each
spring back across the river to farm the land around Saukenuk.

Gray Cloud knew that even the kindliest pale eyes were not to be
trusted. Owl Carver was suspicious of the black-robed medicine man, Pere
Isaac, who talked about the spirit called Jesus and who spent many
afternoons with Gray Cloud, teaching him the words and signs of the
American pale eyes.

The Turtle's voice broke in upon these memories. "Tell my children that
a great clash is to come between them and the long knives. The people
will suffer, and many of them will die."

Gray Cloud gasped as the horror of that sank in. He looked again at the
pale eyes, and now where there had been love he saw lines of sorrow
carved deep into the thin face.

_Is this man, then, a danger to me?_

"Is there no escape, Father Turtle?" he asked again.

"The people must walk their path with courage," said the Turtle. "Black
Hawk will lead them. And he and his braves will show the greatest
courage, such courage that the name of Black Hawk will never be
forgotten in the land where he was born."

The Turtle's golden, heavy-lidded eye seemed to fix itself on Gray
Cloud.

"And you will find your own path. For some of the people