We were all three seized and
handed over to the Mexican agents. Bound hand and foot, under an escort
of thirty men, the next morning we set off to cross the deserts and
prairies of Sonora, to gain the Mexican capital, where we well knew that
a gibbet was to be our fate.
Such was the grateful return we received from those who had called us to
their assistance[17]. Such was my first lesson in civilized life!
[Footnote 17: Americans, or Europeans, who wish to reside in Mexico, are
obliged to conform to the Catholic religion, or they cannot hold
property and become resident merchants. These were the apostates for
wealth who betrayed me.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
As circumstances, which I have yet to relate, have prevented my return
to the Shoshones, and I shall have no more to say of their movements in
these pages, I would fain pay them a just tribute before I continue my
narrative. I wish the reader to perceive how much higher the Western
Indians are in the scale of humanity than the tribes of the East, so
well described be Cooper and other American writers. There is a
chivalrous spirit in these rangers of the western prairies not to be
exceeded in history or modern times.
The four tribes of Shoshones, Arrapahoes, Comanches, and Apaches never
attempt, like the Dacotah and Algonquin, and other tribes of the East,
to surprise an enemy; they take his scalp, it is true, but they take it
in the broad day; neither will they ever murder the squaws, children,
and old men, who may be left unprotected when the war-parties are out.
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