Still he was willing to examine the charmed
spot, scent the fragrant odor, and make up his own estimate of the
artifices by which the bee-hunter had been practising on the
untutored beings into whose hand chance had thrown him.
While the young men eagerly pointed out the precise spots where the
scent was the strongest, Peter maintained the most unmoved gravity.
He did not kneel to smell the rocks, like the other chiefs, for this
an innate sense of propriety told him would be undignified; but he
made his observations closely, and with a keen Indian-like attention
to every little circumstance that might aid him in arriving at the
truth. All this time, great was the awe and deep the admiration of
the lookers-on. Onoah had succeeded in creating a moral power for
himself among the Indians of the northwest which much exceeded that
of any other red man of that region. The whites scarcely heard of
him, knew but little of his career, and less of his true character,
for both were shrouded in mystery. There is nothing remarkable in
this ignorance of the pale-faces of the time. They did not
understand their own leaders; much less the leaders of the children
of the openings, the prairies, and the forest.
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