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Show 156 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF " Now we must exchange guns." It was done. So we went on until we had exchanged all our personal effects, including horse, clothing, and war implements. · "Now," said he, "we are one while we live. What I know, you shall know ; there must be no secret between us." We then proceeded to my father's lodge, and acquainted him with the alliance we had entered into. l-Ie was much pleased at the occurrence, and ever after received my allied brother as his son; but the assumed relationship debarred his ever entering the family a~ son-in-law, since the mutual adoption attached him as by ties of consanguinity. Shortly after, another war party was levied for an excursion after the enemy, or their horses, as occasion mig~t offer. The party consisted of eighty or ninety warnors. ~I y adopted brother inquired of me if I was going with the party. I told him I was, and asked the same questjon of him. " No," he said ; " we are brothers ; we must never both leave our village at once. When I go, you must stay; and when you go, I must stay; one of us must be here to see to the interests of the other. Should we both be killed, then who would mourn faithfully for the other ?" I was, as yet, but a private in the Crow army no commission having been conferred upon me for ;hat !ittle ~ervice I had seen. We started in the night, as 1~ their custom, leaving the village one or two at a time. My brother came to me in the evening, and expressed a wish to speak to me before I left, and pointed to a place where he wished me to meet him alone as JAMES P. BECKWOURTH. 157 we passed out of the village. I went as appointed, and found him there. l-Ie first asked me if I had done any thing in the village. I did not clearly see the import of his question, and I innocently answered "No." "Why, have you not been to war?" "Yes." "Did the warriors not impart to you the war-path secret?" "No." "Ah! well, they will tell it you to-morrow. Go on, my brother." , We all assembled together and marched on. In the forenoon we killed a fine fat buffalo, and rested to take breakfast. The intestines were taken out, and a portion of them cleansed and roasted. A long one was then brought into our mess, which numbered ten warriors, who formed: a circle, every man taki~1g hold of the intestine with his thumb and finger. In this position, very solemnly regarded by all in the eire~, certain questions were propounded to each in relation to certain conduct in the village, which is of a nature unfit to be entered into here. They are religiously committed to a full and categorical answer to each in- ·quiry, no matter whom their confession may implicate. Every illicit action they have committed since they last went to war is here exposed, together with the name of the faithless accomplice, even to the very date of the occurrence. All this is divulged to 'the medicine men on the return of the party, and it is by them noted down in a manner that it is never erased while the guilty confessor lives. Every new warrior, at his initiation, is conjured by the most sacred oaths never |
