It
will give the white men very great pleasure to learn that I have
found the lost tribes of Israel in the red men of America."
"Will my brother tell us WHY this will give his people pleasure? Is
it because they will be glad to find old enemies, poor, living on
narrow hunting-grounds, off which the villages and farms of the
pale-faces begin to push them still nearer to the setting sun; and
toward whom the small-pox has found a path to go, but none to come
from?"
"Nay, nay, Bear's Meat, think not so unkindly of us of the white
race! In crossing the great salt lake, and in coming to this quarter
of the world, our fathers were led by the finger of God. We do but
obey the will of the Great Spirit, in pressing forward into this
wilderness, directed by his wisdom how to spread the knowledge of
his name among those who, as yet, have never heard it; or, having
heard, have not regarded it. In all this, the wisest men are but
babes; not being able to say whither they are to go, or what is to
be done."
"This is strange," returned the unmoved Indian. "It is not so with
the red men. Our squaws and pappooses do know the hunting-ground of
one tribe from the hunting-ground of another.
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