ommon stock used by all speakers as freely
as orators in civilized society are wont to quote great authors and
poets. Among a people who devoted so much time to public discussion, a
forcible speaker wielded great influence. One of the sources of the
power over the natives of La Salle, the great French explorer, lay in
the fact that he had thoroughly mastered their method of oratory and
could harangue an audience in their own tongue like one of their best
speakers.

The subject of the chiefship is a very {34} interesting one. As has
already been explained, a son did not inherit anything from his father.
Therefore nobody was entitled to be a chief because his father had been
one. Chiefs were elected wholly on the ground of personal qualities.
Individual merit was the only thing that counted. Moreover, the chiefs
were not the only men who could originate a movement. Any warrior
might put on his war-paint and feathers and sing his war-song. As many
as were willing might join him, and the party file away on the war-path
without a single chief. If such a voluntary leader showed prowess and
skill, he was sure to be some day elected a chief.

It is very interesting to reflect that just this free state of things
existed thousands of years ago among our own ancestors in Europe. At
that time there were no kings claiming a "divine right" to govern their
fellow men. The chiefs were those whose courage, strength, and skill
in war made them to be chosen "rulers of men," to use old Homer's
phrase. If their sons did not possess these qualities, they remained
among the common herd. But there came a time when, here and there,
some mighty warrior gained so much wealth in cattle and in slaves taken
in battle, that {35} he was able to bribe some of his people and to
frighten others into consenting that his son should be chief after him.
If the son was strong enough to hold the office through his own life
and to hand it to his son, the idea soon became fixed that the
chiefship belonged in that particular family.

This was the beginning of kingship. But our aborigines had not
developed any such absurd notion as that there are particular families
to which God has given the privilege of lording it over their fellow
men. They were still in the free stage of choosing their chiefs from
among the men who served them best. We may say with confidence that
there was not an emperor, or a king, or anything more than an elective
chief in