-just like the one who was disputing our father's right to his
land, only far more beautiful and glossy. She enquired what they were
quarrelling about.

"Why," answered the chief warrior of the beavers, "the strange creature
with whom I was talking, and who, I am sure, is nothing but a polecat
sewed up in a deer-skin, says he owns all the river. He says the Great
Being who is over man and beast, the Master whom even beavers worship,
gave it to him."

"Is that all?" replied the maiden; "but you need not answer, for I
listened with a curious ear to your discourse, and heard it all. It is
not worth going to war about, father--make peace with the stranger, and
each of you retain a sufficiency of the water of the river for his
purposes; and then you can help each other when enemies assail you." And
then, casting a fond look upon the Osage, she called her father aside,
and whispered a long time in his ear, frequently turning her beautiful
eyes, bright with love, upon our ancestor. When they had done talking,
the old warrior came up to the son of the snail and asked him, in an
altered tone, to go home with him to his cabin. So the Osage went home
with the chief beaver and his beautiful daughter.

They soon came to a number of small cabins built on the banks of the
river, and into one of these they entered, the beaver bidding the Osage
first wipe his feet upon the mat which lay beside the door. The Osage
found the floor of the cabin strewed with the newly-gathered branches of
the box and fir. The roof and walls were white as the robe which our
white brother folds around his breast, and a cool, refreshing air
entered the building through the windows which opened on the river.
Around the room--which was four steps of a long-legged man each
way--were hung skins, and skulls, and scalps of otters--trophies of the
wars which the beavers had waged with that nation. In one corner of the
room sat a beaver-woman, combing the heads of some little beavers, whose
ears she boxed very soundly when they would not lie still. The warrior
whispered the Osage that she was his second wife, and was very apt to be
cross when there was work to be done, which prevented her from going to
see her neighbours. Those whose heads she was combing were her children,
he said, and she who had made them rub their noses against each other
and be friends was his eldest daughter.

Then calling aloud, "Wife," said he, "what have you to eat? The stranger
is undoub