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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"Oak Openings"

This is
wrong; it must be looked into.
"Brothers, I have now done; this pale-face wishes to speak, and I
have said that you would hear his words. When he has spoken his
mind, I may have more to tell you. Now, listen to the stranger. He
is a medicine-priest of the white men, and says he has a great
secret to tell our people--when he has told it, I have another for
their ears too. Mine must be spoken when there is no one near but
the children of red clay."
Having thus opened the way for the missionary, Peter courteously
took his seat, producing a little disappointment among his own
admirers, though he awakened a lively curiosity to know what this
medicine-priest might have to say on an occasion so portentous. The
Indians in the regions of the great lakes had long been accustomed
to missionaries, and it is probable that even some of their own
traditions, so far as they related to religious topics, had been
insensibly colored by, if not absolutely derived from, men of this
character; for the first whites who are known to have penetrated
into that portion of the continent were Jesuits, who carried the
cross as their standard and emblem of peace.


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