This Was A
Blackfoot Renegado, Named Kosato, A Fiery Hot-Blooded Youth Who,
With A Beautiful Girl Of The Same Tribe, Had Taken Refuge Among
The Nez Perces.
Though adopted into the tribe, he still
retained the warlike spirit of his race, and loathed the
peaceful, inoffensive habits of those around him.
The hunting of
the deer, the elk, and the buffalo, which was the height of their
ambition, was too tame to satisfy his wild and restless nature.
His heart burned for the foray, the ambush, the skirmish, the
scamper, and all the haps and hazards of roving and predatory
warfare.
The recent hoverings of the Blackfeet about the camp, their
nightly prowls and daring and successful marauds, had kept him in
a fever and a flutter, like a hawk in a cage who hears his late
companions swooping and screaming in wild liberty above him. The
attempt of Captain Bonneville to rouse the war spirit of the Nez
Perces, and prompt them to retaliation, was ardently seconded by
Kosato. For several days he was incessantly devising schemes of
vengeance, and endeavoring to set on foot an expedition that
should carry dismay and desolation into the Blackfeet town. All
his art was exerted to touch upon those springs of human action
with which he was most familiar. He drew the listening savages
round him by his nervous eloquence; taunted them with recitals of
past wrongs and insults; drew glowing pictures of triumphs and
trophies within their reach; recounted tales of daring and
romantic enterprise, of secret marchings, covert lurkings,
midnight surprisals, sackings, burnings, plunderings, scalpings;
together with the triumphant return, and the feasting and
rejoicing of the victors.
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