others; for the country abounded with little
bands, insignificant and powerless.

These Indians revered, as more than mortal, their great chief, whom
they called the child of the Sun. They had a tradition that when they
were a great nation, in Mexico, they were divided into parties by feuds
among their chiefs, and all their power to resist the aggressions of
their enemies was lost; consequently they had fallen under the power of
the Aztecs, who dominated them, and destroyed many of their people.
Upon one occasion, when a common enemy and a common suffering had made
them forget their quarrels, they were assembled for council. Suddenly
there appeared in their midst a white man and woman, surrounded with a
halo of light coming directly from the sun. They were all silent with
awe when this man spoke, and with such authority as to make every chief
tremble with fear. They bowed to him with reverence, and he professing
to be weary with his long journey, they conducted him with his wife to
a lodge, and bade them repose and be rested. The chiefs, in the
darkness of the night and in silence, assembled, while the celestial
pair slept, conscious of security. After long and close council, they
determined to proffer the supreme authority of the nation to this man,
sent to them by the sun. When this determination had been reached, the
chiefs, in a body, repaired to the house occupied by their mysterious
visitors and, arousing them from sleep, they formally tendered to the
man the crown and supreme authority over the chiefs, all their
villages, and all their people. At first he refused, asserting that he
knew their hearts; they carried hatred of one another, and that they
would come to hate him; then they would disobey him, and this would be
death to all the Natchez. Finally yielding to the importunities and
earnestly repeated protestations of a determination to obey him and
follow his counsels implicitly, he agreed to accept the crown upon
certain conditions. These were: first and paramount, that the Natchez
should abandon their homes and country, and follow him to a new home
which he would show them; and that they should live and conform
strictly to the laws he would establish. The principal of these were:
the sovereign of Natchez should always and forever be of his race, and
that if he had sons and daughters, they should not be permitted to
intermarry with each other, but only with the people of the Natchez.
The first-born of his s