ON The Afternoon Of The Following Day (June 1st) They Arrived At
The Great Bend, Where The River Winds For About Thirty Miles
Round A Circular Peninsula, The Neck Of Which Is Not Above Two
Thousand Yards Across.
On the succeeding morning, at an early
hour, they descried two Indians standing on a high bank of the
river, waving and spreading their buffalo robes in signs of
amity.
They immediately pulled to shore and landed. On
approaching the savages, however, the latter showed evident
symptoms of alarm, spreading out their arms horizontally,
according to their mode of supplicating clemency. The reason was
soon explained. They proved to be two chiefs of the very war
party that had brought Messrs. Crooks and M'Lellan to a stand two
years before, and obliged them to escape down the river. They ran
to embrace these gentlemen, as if delighted to meet with them;
yet they evidently feared some retaliation of their past
misconduct, nor were they quite at ease until the pipe of peace
had been smoked.
Mr. Hunt having been informed that the tribe to which these men
belonged had killed three white men during the preceding summer,
reproached them with the crime, and demanded their reasons for
such savage hostility. "We kill white men," replied one of the
chiefs, "because white men kill us. That very man," added he,
pointing to Carson, one of the new recruits, "killed one of our
brothers last summer. The three white men were slain to avenge
his death."
Their chief was correct in his reply.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 220 of 615
Words from 59364 to 59622
of 165649
