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Show • ACTOBIOGRAPHY OF "I am now your great chie£ If you obey what I say to you, I can make you· all you wish to be. By my long stay with the whites, I possess advantages which the chiefs of no other tribe possess. I can get twice as much for our robes and beavers as you ever got before. I came back to you. I can talk to our white brethren, and they understand all my words. 'rhey know that if they cheat my people I shall findi it out. "My medicine tells me that we must not make war on our enemies, unless they first kill our people or steal our horses: we must then attack them with many warriors, so that we may run no danger of being rubbed out. I shall never consent for our nation to" have more than two villages at one time. Let those two villages keep their warriors, their wives, and their children together, and not subdivide, when they are sure to be attacked by the enemies. When our village is united, no enemy will ever dare to attack it. H :1\Iy brother, Long Hair, is a very great brave, a wise chie£ He will guide one village, and it will be my duty to guide the council and direct the other. I want all my warriors to lay aside the battle-axe and lance for a season, and turn their attention to hunting and trapping. Our streams are full of beaver, as also are our prairies with buffalo. Our squaws excel all others in dressing robes, for which the whites pay us a great price.· Then let us get all the robes they can dress, and not keep them in idleness as mere playthings. If we keep them at work, they will be healthy, and strong, and brave, when they become warriors. They can also buy every thing they require, both for themselves and their children, while the beavers of the warriors will also supply our wants. JAMES P. BECKWOUR1'H. 269 " Warriors ! How can we do all this, if we scatter over the country in numerous little villages, subject to continual attacks from our enemies, who will cut us off, a few at a time, until we are all rubbed out? No; obey me, and keep yourselves undivided; and if en_emies attack us, we can kill ten of them when they k1ll one Crow: thus my medicine says. But if you disobey 1ne, and will not hearken to my words, t~en I shall surely leave you, and return to my white fnends, not endurinO' to see the nation become weak, and flying before their enemies, and our wo~en and children carried into captivity. Obey and ass1s't me, then, and I will do my best in your behal£ Warriors, I have done." This oration was received with undisguised approv-al, and I received the name of Good War Road. . A herald having been dispatched to our other ;Illage to acquaint them with the death of our head ~h1ef, and request then1 to assemble at the Rose Bud, 1n order to meet our village and devote themselves to a general time of mourning, there met, in conformity with this summons, over ten thousand Crows at the place indicated. Such a scene of disorderly, vociferous mourning no imagination can conceive, nor _any pen portray. Long Hair cut off a large 1·oll of h1s ha1~·, a thing he was never known to do before. The cut~1ng and hacking of human flesh exceeded all my prevwus experience ; fingers were dismembered as readily as twigs, and blood was poured out like water. Ma~y of the warriors would cut two gashes nearly the entire length of their -arm; then, separating the skin from the flesh at one end, would grasp it in their other hand, and rip it asunder to the shoulder. Others would carve various devices upon their breasts and shoulders, • |