When they put their
feet on strange hunting-grounds, it is because they INTENDED to go
there, and to steal game. This is sometimes right. If it is right to
take the scalp of an enemy, it is right to get his deer and his
buffalo, too. But we never do this without knowing it. If we did, we
should be unfit to go at large, unfit to sit in council. This is the
first time I have heard that the pale-faces are so weak, and they
have such feeble minds, too, that they do not know where they go."
"My brother does not understand me. No man can see into the future--
no man can say what will happen to-morrow. The Great Spirit only can
tell. It is for him, then, to guide his children in their
wanderings. When our fathers first came out of their canoes upon the
land, on this side of the great salt lake, not one among them knew
anything of this country between the great lakes of sweet water.
They did not know that red men lived here. The Great Spirit did
know, and intended then, that I should this night stand up in this
council, and speak of his power and of his name, and do him
reverence. It was the Great Spirit that put it into my mind to come
among the Indians; and it is the Great Spirit who has led me, step
by step, as warriors move toward the graves of their fathers, to
make the discovery, that the Indians are, in truth, the children of
Israel, a part of his own chosen and once much-favored people.
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