I
understand that we ought to love our friends. Your squaw is my
daughter. I have called her daughter--she knows it, and my tongue is
not forked, like a snake's. What it says, I mean. Once I meant to
scalp your young squaw, because she was a pale-face squaw, and might
be the mother of more. Now I do not mean to scalp her; my hand shall
never harm her. My wisdom shall tell her to escape from the hands of
red men who seek her scalp. You, too; now you are her husband, and
are a great medicine-man of the bees, my hand shall not hurt you,
either. Open your ears wide, for big truths must go into them."
Peter then related in full his attempt to procure a safe passage for
le Bourdon and Margery into the settlements, and its total failure.
He owned that by his previous combinations he had awakened a spirit
among the Indians that his present efforts could not quell. In a
word, he told the whole story as it must have been made apparent to
the reader, and he now came with his plans to defeat the very
schemes that he had himself previously projected. One thing,
however, that he did not conceal, filled the mind of his listener
with horror, and created so strong an aversion to acting in concert
with one who could even allude to it so coolly, that there was
danger of breaking off all communications between the parties, and
placing the result purely on force; a course that must have proved
totally destructive to all the whites.
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