I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!"

I adjourned from there also.

"Confound these Indians!" I said. "They told me they were tame; but, if

appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath."

I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I came

upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum

and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship:

"Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High

Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you!

You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, Roaring

Thundergust--you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyond

the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your

ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a

vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have

depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of

others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your

simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper.

Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and

tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the

picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of

the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the

purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their

Sketches New and Old