Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/233

Rh He will guide one village, and it will be my duty to guide the council and direct the other. I want all my warriors to lay aside the battle-axe and lance for a season, and turn their attention to hunting and trapping. Our streams are full of beaver, as also are our prairies with buffalo. Our squaws excel all others in dressing robes, for which the whites pay us a great price. Then let us get all the robes they can dress, and not keep them in idleness as mere playthings. If we keep them at work, they will be healthy, and strong, and brave, when they become warriors. They can also buy everything they require, both for themselves and their children, while the beavers of the warriors will also supply our wants.

"Warriors! How can we do all this, if we scatter over the country in numerous little villages, subject to continual attacks from our enemies, who will cut us off, a few at a time, until we are all rubbed out? No; obey me, and keep yourselves undivided; and if enemies attack us, we can kill ten of them when they kill one Crow: thus my medicine says. But if you disobey me, and will not hearken to my words, then I shall surely leave you and return to my white friends, not enduring to see the nation become weak, and flying before their enemies, and our women and children carried into captivity. Obey and assist me, then, and I will do my best in your behalf. Warriors, I have done."

This oration was received with undisguised approval, and I received the name of Good War Road.

A herald having been despatched to our other village to acquaint them with the death of our head chief, and request them to assemble at the Rose Bud, in order to meet our village and devote themselves to a general time of mourning, there met, in conformity with this summons, over ten thousand Crows at the place indicated. Such a scene of disorderly, vociferous mourning no imagination can conceive, nor any pen portray. Long Hair cut off a large roll of his hair, a thing he was never known to do before. The cutting and hacking of human flesh exceeded all my previous experience; fingers were dismembered as readily as twigs, and blood was poured out like water. Many of the warriors would cut two gashes nearly the entire length of their arm; then separating the skin