One old chief began as follows:--
"I will tell ye of the Shkote-nah Pishkuan, or the boat of fire, when I
saw it for the first time. Since that, the grass has withered fifteen
times in the prairies, and I have grown weak and old. Then I was a
warrior, and many scalps have I taken on the eastern shores of the
Sabine. Then, also, the Pale-faces living in the prairies were good; we
fought them because we were enemies, but they never stole anything from
us, nor we from them.
"Well, at that time, we were once in the spring hunting the buffalo. The
Caddoes, who are now a small tribe of starved dogs, were then a large
powerful nation, extending from the Cross Timbers to the waters of the
great stream, in the East, but they were gamblers and drunkards; they
would sell all their furs for the; 'Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and return
to their villages to poison their squaws, and make brutes of their
children. Soon they got nothing more to sell; and as they could not now
do without the 'Shoba-wapo,' they began to steal. They would steal the
horses and oxen of the Pale-faces, and say 'The Comanches did it.' When
they killed trappers or travellers, they would go to the fort of the
Yankees and say to them, 'Go to the wigwams of the Comanches, and you
will see the scalps of your friends hanging upon long poles.
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