kering,' accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse of
the garrison. The bets were doubled; and in less than an hour the
second race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertion
and with exactly the same result.

"The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race and brought
to the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood.
The Indians accepted the race and not only doubled bets as before, but
piled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with the
excitement of their previous success. The riders mounted, and the word
was given. Throwing away his club, the Indian rider gave a whoop, at
which the sheep-like pony pricked up his ears and went away like the
wind almost two feet to the mare's one. The last fifty yards of the
course was run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail,
making hideous grimaces and beckoning to the rider of the mare to come
on.

"It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and
straight-race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, and
had lately won for his master six hundred ponies among the Kickapoos of
the Indian Nation."

[2] They learned from these Indians to handle skin-boats, or
"bull-boats," such as we shall see were in constant use among the
Mandans of the upper Missouri.

[3] These people, sometimes called the Pawnee family, were scattered,
in various wandering bands, from eastern Texas as far north as the
Missouri.

{289}

Chapter XV

FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN

His Birth and Early Experiences.--His Description of Niagara
Falls.--His Great Fraud.--His Real Achievement.--Captured by the
Sioux.--Given to a Master.--Superstitious Fears of the Indians.--Goes
with a Hunting Party.--Sees and names the Falls of St.
Anthony.--Various Adventures.--Rescued and Freed.

We come now to tell the story of a man who was neither great nor good,
but was a most picturesque and entertaining scamp, and who withal
deserves some small place among the Pathfinders.

Imagine a burly friar, in robe of rough gray frieze, his head covered
by a pointed hood, his otherwise bare feet protected by sandals, in his
hand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging his
scanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoe
from one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he could
get together a half-dozen people, telling them the gossip of the river,
eating a r