Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/197

 and this is my brother Natchez; and father and brother and thirty men are going with us to see the Umatillas who are with you.”

The lieutenant said, “Very well, they can go with us.”

I had had no sleep yet. In those days I never knew what it was to be tired or sleepy.

My father then got up and spoke, saying, “I am ashamed to have to speak to you, my children. I am ashamed for you, not for myself. Where is one among you who can get up and say, ‘I have been in battle, and have seen soldiers and my people fight and fall. Oh! for shame I for shame to you, young men, who ought to have come with this news to me! I am much pained because my dear daughter has come with the fearful things which have happened in the war. Oh, yes! my child’s name is so far beyond yours; none of you can ever come up to hers. Her name is everywhere and every one praises her. Oh! how thankful I feel that it is my own child who has saved so many lives, not only mine, but a great many, both whites and her own people. Now hereafter we will look on her as our chieftain, for none of us are worthy of being chief but her, and all I can say to you is to send her to the wars and you stay and do women’s work, and talk as women do.

“Now we will go and see the man-eaters. I have never shot anything in all my life but what is good to eat. In my way of thinking and in my father’s way of thinking, no man ought to kill anything unless it is good to eat. We were obliged to fight our white brothers at one time. It was only five months after my poor father’s death. If he had lived it might not have happened. I have promised to be a friend to white people, and I have done just as I said, although they have killed my people here and there. I have not unburied my bow and arrows yet, and I hope,