lodges, and when the smoke was all gone, it left a smell of powder; the
monster was far, far off and there was no trace of it left, except the
moans of the wounded and the lamentation of the squaws among
the Caddoes.

"I and my young men soon recovered our senses; we entered the village,
burnt everything, and killed the warriors. They would not fight; but as
they were thieves, we destroyed them. We returned to our own villages,
every one of us with many scalps, and since that time the Caddoes have
never been a nation; they wander from north to south, and from east to
west; they have huts made with the bark of trees, or they take shelter
in the burrows of the prairie dogs, with the owls and the snakes; but
they have no lodges, no wigwams, no villages. Thus may it be with all
the foes of our great nation."

This an historical fact. The steamboat "Beaver" made its first
exploration upon the Red River, some eighty miles above the French
settlement of Nachitochy, just at the very time that the Comanches were
attacking the last Caddoe village upon the banks of the Red River. These
poor savages yelled with terror when the strange mass passed thus before
them, and, either from wanton cruelty or from fear of an attack, the
boat fired four guns, loaded with grape-shot, upon the village, from
which they were not a hundred yards distant.

The following is a narrative of events which happened in the time of
Mosh Kohta (buffalo), a great chief, hundreds of years ago, when the
unfortunate "La Salle" was shipwrecked upon the coast of Texas, while
endeavouring to discover the mouth of the Mississippi. Such records are
very numerous among the great prairie tribes; they bear sometimes the
Ossianic type, and are related every evening during the month of
February, when the "Divines" and the elders of the nation teach to the
young men the traditions of former days.

"It was in the time of a chief, a great chief, strong, cunning, and
wise, a chief of many bold deeds. His name was Mosh Kohta.

"It is a long while! No Pale-faces dwelt in the land of plenty (the
translation of the Indian word 'Texas'); our grandfathers had just
received it from the Great Spirit, and they had come from the setting of
the sun across the big mountains to take possession. We were a great
nation--we are so now, we have always been so, and we will ever be. At
that time, also, our tribe spread all along the western shores of the
great stream Mississippi, for no P