Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/161

151 amount of the thousand dollars in merchandise, who repaired to the nation, and after he had found her, purchased her ransom; but to his great surprise, she refused to return with him to her father, and sent by him the following message: that the Indians had disfigured her face, by tattooing it according to their fancy and ideas of beauty, and a young man of them had taken her for his wife, by whom she believed herself pregnant; that she had become reconciled to her mode of life, and was well treated by her husband; and that she should be more unhappy by returning to her father, under these circumstances, than by remaining where she was. Which message was conveyed to her father, who rewarded the trader by a present of three hundred dollars more for his trouble and fidelity; and that, at the time of relating this account, his daughter was living with her Indian husband, in the nation, by whom she had had three children.

The Natchitoches nation formerly lived, where the town of Natchitoches is now situated, which took its name from them. About one hundred years ago, when the French began their settlement in this town, this nation had six hundred men. They became attached to French people, and have ever been their steady and faithful friends. After the massacre of the French inhabitants of Natchez, by the Natchez Indians, in 1728, those Indians fled from the French, after the French were reinforced, and came up Red