--

"Do you not want to become the most powerful nation of the West? You do.
If then such is the case, you must ask assistance from the earth, which
is your mother. True, you have prairies abounding in game, but the
squaws and the children cannot follow your path when hunting.

"Are not the Crows, the Bannaxas, the Flat Heads, and the Umbiquas,
starving during the winter? They have no buffalo in their land, and but
few deer. What have they to eat? A few lean horses, perchance a bear;
and the stinking flesh of the otter or beaver they may entrap during
the season.

"Would they not be too happy to exchange their furs against the corn,
the tobacco, and good dried fish of the Shoshones? Now they sell their
furs to the Yankees, but the Yankees bring them no food. The Flat Heads
take the fire-water and blankets from the traders, but they do so
because they cannot get anything else, and their packs of furs would
spoil if they kept them.

"Would they not like better to barter them with you, who are so near to
them, for good food to sustain them and their children during the
winter--- to keep alive their squaws and their old men during the long
snow and the dreary moons of darkness and gloom?

"Now if the Shoshones had corn and tobacco to give for furs, they would
become rich. They would have the best saddles from Mexico, and the best
rifles from the Yankees, the best tomahawks and blankets from the
Canadians. Who then could resist the Shoshones? When they would go
hunting, hundreds of the other natives would clear for them the forest
path, or tear with their hands the grass out of their track in the
prairie. I have spoken."

All the Indians acknowledged that the talk was good and full of wisdom:
but they were too proud to work. An old chief answered for the
whole tribe.

"Nanawa Ashta is a great chief: he is a brave! The Manitou speaks softly
to his ears, and tells him the secret which makes the heart of a warrior
big or small; but Nanawa has a pale face--his blood is a strange blood,
although his heart is ever with his red friends. It is only the white
Manitou that speaks to him, and how could the white Manitou know the
nature of the Indians? He has not made them; he don't call them to him;
he gives them nothing; he leaves them poor and wretched; he keeps all
for the pale faces.

"It is right he should do so. The panther will not feed the young of the
deer, nor will the hawk sit upon the eggs of the dove. It is life,