hat quarter, in 1840, as to induce
a large body of them to accompany me back to the station, they had to
walk a distance of 150 miles, making daily the same stages that the
horses did, and unprovided with any food but what they could procure
along the road as they passed, and this from the rapidity with which
they had to travel, and the distance they had to go in a day, was
necessarily limited in quantity, and very far from sufficient to
appease even the cravings of hunger, yet tired, foot-sore, and hungry
as they were, and in company with strangers, whose countrymen had slain
them in scores, but a few months before, they were always merry at
their camps at nights, and kept singing, laughing, and joking, to a
late hour.

[Note 59: Such appears usually to be the characteristic of Nature's
children, than whom no race appears more thoroughly to enjoy life.--Vide
character of the American Indians, by Catlin, vol. 1. p. 84.]

On falling in with them in larger numbers, when I have been travelling in
the interior with my party, I have still found the same disposition to
meet me on terms of amity and kindness. Nor can a more interesting sight
well be imagined, than that of a hundred or two hundred natives advancing
in line to meet you, unarmed, shouting and waving green boughs in both
hands, men, women, and children, the old and the young, all joining in
expressing their good feelings and pacific intentions. On such occasions
I have been often astonished at the facility with which large bodies,
have by a little kindness and forbearance been managed, and kept from
being troublesome or annoying, by a party of only six or seven Europeans.
I have occasionally had upwards of 150 natives sitting in a long line,
where I placed them, and as orderly and obedient almost as a file of
soldiers.

At other times, when riding with only a native boy over the plains of the
interior, I have seen the blue smoke of the native fires, curling up
through the distant line of trees, which marked some yet unvisited
watercourse, and upon making towards it, have come suddenly upon a party
encamped in the hollow, beneath the banks upon which I stood. Here I have
remained, observing them for a few moments, unseen and unthought of. A
single call would arouse their attention, and as they looked up, would
draw from them a wild exclamation of dismay, accompanied by a look of
indescribable horror and affright, at beholding the strange, and to them
incomprehen