Do you not want to become the most powerful nation of the West? You do. If then such is the case, you must ask assistance from the earth, which is your mother. True, you have prairies abounding in game, but the squaws and the children cannot follow your path when hunting.
Are not the Crows, the Bannaxas, the Flat Heads, and the Umbiquas, starving during the winter? They have no buffalo in their land, and but few deer. What have they to eat? A few lean horses, perchance a bear; and the stinking flesh of the otter or beaver they may trap during the season.
Would they not be too happy to exchange their furs against the corn, the tobacco, and good dried fish of the Shoshones? Now they sell their furs to the Yankees, but the Yankees bring them no food. The Flat Heads take the fire-water and blankets from the traders, but they do so because they cannot get any thing else, and their packs of furs would spoil if they kept them.
Would they not like better to barter them with you, who are so near to them, for good food to sustain them and their children during the winterto keep alive their squaws and their old men during the long snow and the dreary moons of darkness and gloom?
Now if the Shoshones had corn and tobacco to give for furs, they would become rich. They would have the best saddles from Mexico, and the best rifles from the Yankees, the best tomahawks and blankets from the Canadians. 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 facehis 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 dont 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 manit 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
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 brought with him a great warrior of the pale faces, who was a mighty chief in his tribe; he has given us a young chief who is a great hunter; in a few years he will be a great warrior, and lead our young men in the war path on the plains of the Wachinangoes2, for Owato Wachina3 is a Shoshone, though his skin is paler than the flower of the magnolia.
Nanawa has also given to us two Makota Konayas4, to teach wisdom to our young men; their words are sweet, they speak to the heart; they know every thing and make men better. Nanawa is a great chief, very wise; what he says is right, what he wishes must be done, for he is our father, and he gave us strength to fight our enemies.
He is right, the Shoshones must have their lodges full of corn and tobacco. The Shoshones must ever be what they are, what they were, a great nation. But the chief of many winters hath said it; the hedge-hogs and the foxes may dig the earth, but the eyes of the Shoshones are always turned towards their enemies in the woods, or the buffaloes in the plains.
Yet the will of Nanawa must be done, but not by a Shoshone. We will give him plenty of squaws and dogs; we will bring him slaves from the Umbiquas, the Cayuses, and the Wallah Wallahs. They shall grow the corn and the tobacco while we hunt; while we go to fetch more slaves, even in the big mountains, or among the dogs of the south, the Wachinangoes. I will send the vermilion5 to my young warriors, they will paint their faces and follow me on the war-path. I have spoken!
Thus ended the hopes of making agriculturists of the wild people among whom we lived; nor did I wonder such as they were, they felt happy. What could they want besides their neat conical skin lodges, their dresses, which were good, comfortable, and elegant, and their women, who were virtuous, faithful, and pretty? Had they not the unlimited range of the prairies? were they not lords over millions of elks and buffaloes?they wanted nothing, except tobacco. And yet it was a pity we could not succeed in giving them a taste for civilisation. They were gentlemen by nature; as indeed almost all the Indians are, when not given to drinking. They are extremely well bred, and stamped with the indubitable seal of nobility on their brow.