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Gabriel Franchere, one of the Astor clerks, in his Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America—French edition, 1819; English edition, 1854—has the following to say on the important part that words played in their battles:

". . . those people . . . repair to the hostile village, enter into parley, and do all they can to terminate the affair amicably: sometimes a third party becomes mediator between the first two, and of course observes an exact neutrality. If those who seek justice do not obtain it to their satisfaction, they retire to some distance, and the combat begins, and is continued with fury on both sides; but as soon as one or two men are killed, the party which has lost these, owns itself beaten and the battle ceases. . . . When the conflict is postponed till the next day (for they never fight in open daylight, as if to render nature witness to their exploits), they keep up frightful cries all night long, and, when they are sufficiently near to understand each other, defy one another by menaces, railleries, and sarcasms, like the heroes of Homer and Virgil."

It is unfortunate that examples could not be found of these wrangling harangues or of the very early orations to which the explorers make reference. Texts of later orations by chiefs are available, but these are usually from red men to white, and are not the same thing as the scornful tongue of warrior to warrior, between hostile bivouacs, across a narrow no-man's-land in the darkness.

Dr. Melville Jacobs is associate professor of anthropology in the