Page:Rocky Mountain life.djvu/167

 Thus premised, he proceeded to explain the great truths of Christianity, and averred that he had come to do them good, and to tell them how to be happy; asserting that, unless they listened to him and worshipped the Good Spirit in the manner he pointed out, they could never, at death, reach that happy country into which good people alone find Admittance.

One of the chiefs upon this arose and made the following reply:

"My white brother is a stranger to us. He talks bad of us, and he talks bad of his own people.

"He does this because he is ignorant. He thinks my people, like his, are wicked. Thus far he is wrong!

"Who were they that killed the very good man of whom he tells us? None of them were red men!

"The red man will die for good men, who are his friends;—he will not kill them!

"Let my pale-face brother talk to the white man—his own people—they are very bad. He says, he would do us good! He does no good to chide us and say we are very bad.

"True we are bad; and were we bad as the pale-faces it would become us to listen to him!

"Would my brother do as good? Then, let him tell us how to make powder and we will believe in the sincerity of his professions;—but let him not belie us by saying we are bad like the pale-faces!"

These Indians rarely kill the women and children of an enemy when in their power, and, in this particular, they show themselves unlike most of the wild tribes found on the American continent.

They are a brave and noble people, prosecuting their endless hostilities against the Sioux and Blackfeet, (the only nations with whom they are at variance,) not so much to gratify an innate love for war, as from a just hatred of the meanness of those they war against.

In the summer of 1842, a war-party of some two hundred Crows invaded the Sioux country by way of Laramie pass, and penetrated as far as Fort Platte, and beyond, in pursuit of their enemy.

A few miles above the Fort, having met with a lone French engagé, who was rather green in all that pertains to Indians as well as some other things, they began by signs to enquire of him the whereabouts of the Lacotas, (the sign for them being a transverse pass of the right front-finger cross the throat.)

The poor Frenchman, mistaking this for the avowed intention of cutting his throat, commenced bellowing a la calf, accompanying the music by an industrious appliance of crosses in double-quick time—not forgetting to make use of sundry most earnest invocations of the blessed Virgin to graciously vouchsafe to him deliverance from impending danger.

The Indians, perceiving his strange conduct to be the result of fear, felt disposed to have a little fun at his expense; so, mounting him upon a horse, they bound his hands and feet and guarded him to a post of the American Fur Company as a prisoner.