mpression of the
wonders of the pale-face. They had seen it go over a bridge that spanned
a deep ravine and it seemed to them that it jumped from one bank to the
other. I confess that the story almost quenched my ardor and bravery.

Two or three young men were talking together about this fearful
invention.

"However," said one, "I understand that this
fire-boat-walks-on-mountains cannot move except on the track made for
it."

Although a boy is not expected to join in the conversation of his
elders, I ventured to ask: "Then it cannot chase us into any rough
country?"

"No, it cannot do that," was the reply, which I heard with a great deal
of relief.

I had seen guns and various other things brought to us by the French
Canadians, so that I had already some notion of the supernatural gifts
of the white man; but I had never before heard such tales as I listened
to that morning. It was said that they had bridged the Missouri and
Mississippi rivers, and that they made immense houses of stone and
brick, piled on top of one another until they were as high as high
hills. My brain was puzzled with these things for many a day. Finally
I asked my uncle why the Great Mystery gave such power to the Washechu
(the rich)-sometimes we called them by this name--and not to us Dakotas.

"For the same reason," he answered, "that he gave to Duta the skill to
make fine bows and arrows, and to Wachesne no skill to make anything."

"And why do the Big Knives increase so much more in number than the
Dakotas?" I continued.

"It has been said, and I think it must be true, that they have larger
families than we do. I went into the house of an Eashecha (a German),
and I counted no less than nine children. The eldest of them could not
have been over fifteen. When my grandfather first visited them, down
at the mouth of the Mississippi, they were comparatively few; later my
father visited their Great Father at Washington, and they had already
spread over the whole country."

"Certainly they are a heartless nation. They have made some of their
people servants--yes, slaves! We have never believed in keeping slaves,
but it seems that these Washechu do! It is our belief that they painted
their servants black a long time ago, to tell them from the rest, and
now the slaves have children born to them of the same color!

"The greatest object of their lives seems to be to acquire
possessions--to be rich. They desire to possess the whole world. For