ld assemble, to smoke and relate the strange stories of days
gone by. Some of them appeared to me particularly beautiful; I shall,
therefore, narrate them to the reader. One old chief began as follows:--

"I will tell ye of the Shkote-nah Pishkuan, or the boat of fire, when I
saw it for the first time. Since that, the grass has withered fifteen
times in the prairies, and I have grown weak and old. Then I was a
warrior, and many scalps have I taken on the eastern shores of the
Sabine. Then, also, the Pale-faces living in the prairies were good; we
fought them because we were enemies, but they never stole anything from
us, nor we from them.

"Well, at that time, we were once in the spring hunting the buffalo. The
Caddoes, who are now a small tribe of starved dogs, were then a large
powerful nation, extending from the Cross Timbers to the waters of the
great stream, in the East, but they were gamblers and drunkards; they
would sell all their furs for the; 'Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and return
to their villages to poison their squaws, and make brutes of their
children. Soon they got nothing more to sell; and as they could not now
do without the 'Shoba-wapo,' they began to steal. They would steal the
horses and oxen of the Pale-faces, and say 'The Comanches did it.' When
they killed trappers or travellers, they would go to the fort of the
Yankees and say to them, 'Go to the wigwams of the Comanches, and you
will see the scalps of your friends hanging upon long poles.' But we did
not care for we knew it was not true.

"A long time passed away, when the evil spirit of the Cad does whispered
to them to come to the villages of the Comanches while they were
hunting, and to take away with them all that they could. They did so,
entering the war-path as foxes and owls, during night. When they
arrived, they found nothing but squaws, old women, and little children.
Yet these fought well, and many of the Caddoes were killed before they
abandoned their lodges. They soon found us out in the hunting-ground;
and our great chief ordered me to start with five hundred warriors, and
never return until the Caddoes should have no home, and wander like deer
and starved wolves in the open prairie.

"I followed the track. First, I burnt their great villages in the Cross
Timbers, and then pursued them in the swamps and cane-brakes of the
East, where they concealed themselves among the long lizards of the
water (the alligators). We, however, came