elebrated throughout the vast regions of the west, from the
Mississippi to the Hills of the Serpent[A], from the Missouri to the
Plains of Bitter Frost, for all those qualities which render an Indian
warrior famous and feared. He was the terror of his enemies, whom in
the conflict he never spared; the delight as well as refuge of his
friends, whom he never deserted. Yet, brave as he was, and fierce and
reckless when met in the strife of warriors, never did his valour, or
his fierceness, or his recklessness of danger, betray him into those
excesses of wrath and cruelty, which, after great victories purchased
by much blood and loss of dear and valued friends, will often be seen
in the camp of the red man of the forest. Never by his counsels was
the captive tortured--never by his command were weak and defenceless
women and children delivered over to slaughter. He had frequently been
known, at the voice of pity crying at the door of the heart, and at
the suggestions of a great and proud mind, to cut the bonds which
bound the victim to the stake, thereby exposing himself to the wrath
and anger of his stern warriors, and to rage which, but for the
unequalled valour and daring boldness and wisdom of his career, both
as a warrior and a man, would have been attended with death to
himself, and the entailment of infamy upon his name. It has already
been told our brother, that none but a noted and approved warrior dare
take upon himself the liberation of a prisoner, devoted by the spirit
of Indian warfare to tortures and death.

[Footnote A: Hills of the Serpent, the Rocky Mountains. I have before
mentioned the Indian superstition that thunder is the hissing of a
great serpent, which has his residence among those mountains.]

In one of the war expeditions of the Pawnee Mahas against the
Burntwood Tetons, it was the good fortune of the former to overcome,
and to take many prisoners--men, women, and children. One of the
captives, Sakeajah, or the Bird-Girl, a beautiful creature in the
morning of life, after being adopted into one of the Mahas families,
became the favourite wife of the chief warrior of the nation. Great
was the love and affection which the White Crane bore his beautiful
wife, and it grew yet stronger in his soul, when she had brought him
four sons--a gift the more highly prized by the wise and sagacious
chief, because, as my brother can see, for he is not a fool, it was
the pledge of continued power and importance in