The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas | Page 5

Who then could resist the Shoshones? When they
would go hunting, hundreds of the other natives would clear for them
the forest path, or tear with their hands the grass out of their track in the
prairie. I have spoken."
All the Indians acknowledged that the talk was good and full of
wisdom: but they were too proud to work. An old chief answered for
the whole tribe.

"Nanawa Ashta is a great chief: he is a brave! The Manitou speaks
softly to his ears, and tells him the secret which makes the heart of a
warrior big or small; but Nanawa has a pale face--his blood is a strange
blood, although his heart is ever with his red friends. It is only the
white Manitou that speaks to him, and how could the white Manitou
know the nature of the Indians? He has not made them; he don't call
them to him; he gives them nothing; he leaves them poor and wretched;
he keeps all for the pale faces.
"It is right he should do so. The panther will not feed the young of the
deer, nor will the hawk sit upon the eggs of the dove. It is life, it is
order, it is nature. Each has his own to provide for and no more. Indian
corn is good; tobacco is good, it gladdens the heart of the old men
when they are in sorrow; tobacco is the present of chiefs to chiefs. The
calumet speaks of war and death; it discourses also of peace and
friendship. The Manitou made the tobacco expressly for man--it is
good.
"But corn and tobacco must be taken from the earth; they must be
watched for many moons, and nursed like children. This is work fit
only for squaws and slaves. The Shoshones are warriors and free; if
they were to dig in the ground, their sight would become weak, and
their enemies would say they were moles and badgers.
"Does the just Nanawa wish the Shoshones to be despised by the Crows
or the horsemen of the south? No! he had fought for them before he
went to see if the bones of his fathers were safe; and since his return,
has he not given to them rifles and powder, and long nets to catch the
salmon, and plenty of iron to render their arrows feared alike by the
buffaloes and the Umbiquas?
"Nanawa speaks well, for he loves his children: but the spirit that
whispers to him is a pale-face spirit, that cannot see under the skin of a
red warrior; it is too tough: nor in his blood; it is too dark.
"Yet tobacco is good, and corn too. The hunters of the Flat Heads and
Pierced Noses would come in winter to beg for it; their furs would
make warm the lodges of the Shoshones. And my people would
become rich and powerful; they would be masters of all the country,
from the salt waters to the big mountains; the deer would come and lick
their hands, and the wild horses would graze around their wigwams.
'Tis so that the pale faces grow rich and strong; they plant corn, tobacco,

and sweet melons; they have trees that bear figs and peaches; they feed
swine and goats, and tame buffaloes. They are a great people.
"A red-skin warrior is nothing but a warrior; he is strong, but he is poor;
he is not a wood-chunk, nor a badger, nor a prairie dog; he cannot dig
the ground; he is a warrior, and nothing more. I have spoken."
Of course the tenor of this speech was too much in harmony with
Indian ideas not to be received with admiration. The old man took his
seat, while another rose to speak in his turn.
"The great chief hath spoken; his hair is white like the down of the
swan; his winters have been many; he is wise; why should I speak after
him, his words were true? The Manitou touched my ears and my eyes
when he spoke (and he spoke like a warrior); I heard his war-cry, I saw
the Umbiquas running in the swamps, and crawling like black snakes
under the bushes. I spied thirty scalps on his belt, his leggings and
mocassins were sewn with the hair of the Wallah Wallahs[1].
[Footnote 1: Indians living on the Columbian river, two hundred miles
above Fort Vancouver, allied to the Nez Percés, and great supporters of
the Americans.]
"I should not speak; I am young yet and have no wisdom; my words are
few, I should not speak. But in my vision I heard a spirit, it came upon
the breeze, it entered within me.
"Nanawa is my father, the father to all, he loves us, we are his children;
he has