His English
sobriquet had been obtained from the circumstances of its being
reputed that this chief, who seemed to belong to no tribe in
particular, while he had great influence with all, had on divers
occasions murdered the palefaces who fell in his way, and then
scalped them. It was added, that he had already forty notches on his
pole, to note that number of scalps taken from the hated whites. In
short, this Indian, a sort of chief by birth, though of what tribe
no one exactly knew, appeared to live only to revenge the wrongs
done his color by the intruders, who had come from toward the rising
sun to drive his people into the great salt lake on the other side
of the Rocky Mountains. Of course there was a good deal that was
questionable in these reports; a rumor in the "openings" and on the
prairies, having this general resemblance to those that circulate in
town, and in drawing-rooms, and at feasts, that no one of them all
can be relied on as rigidly exact. But le Bourdon was still young,
and had yet to learn how little of that which we all hear is true,
and how very much is false. Nevertheless, as an Indian tradition is
usually more accurate than a white man's written history, so is a
rumor of the forest generally entitled to more respect than the
ceaseless gossipings of the beings who would be affronted were they
not accounted civilized.
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