Murmurs of approbation were heard,
and Crowsfeather addressed the throng, there, where it stood,
encircling the two helpless and as yet but half-alarmed victims of
so fell a plot.
"My brothers and my young men can now see," said this Pottawattamie,
"that the tribeless chief has an Injin heart. His heart is NOT a
pale-face heart--it is that of a red man. Some of our chiefs have
thought that he had lived too much with the strangers, and that he
had forgotten the traditions of our fathers, and was listening to
the song of the medicine priest. Some thought that he believed
himself lost, and a Jew, and not an Injin. This is not so. Peter
knows the path he is on. He knows that he is a redskin, and he looks
on the Yankees as enemies. The scalps he has taken are so numerous
they cannot be counted. He is ready to take more. Here are two that
he gives to us. When we have done with these two captives, he will
bring us more. He will continue to bring them, until the pale-faces
will be as few as the deer in their own clearings. Such is the will
of the Manitou."
The missionary understood all that was said, and he was not a little
appalled at the aspect of things.
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