Among The
Parties Which Arrived Was One That Had Been Among The Snake
Nation Stealing Horses, And Returned Crowned With Success.
As
they passed in triumph through the village they were cheered by
the men, women, and children, collected as usual on the tops of
the lodges, and were exhorted by the Nesters of the village to be
generous in their dealings with the white men.
The evening was spent in feasting and rejoicing among the
relations of the successful warriors; but the sounds of grief and
wailing were heard from the hills adjacent to the village -the
lamentations of women who had lost some relative in the foray.
An Indian village is subject to continual agitations and
excitements. The next day arrived a deputation of braves from the
Cheyenne or Shienne nation; a broken tribe, cut up, like the
Arickaras, by wars with the Sioux, and driven to take refuge
among the Black Hills, near the sources of the Cheyenne River,
from which they derive their name. One of these deputies was
magnificently arrayed in a buffalo robe, on which various figures
were fancifully embroidered with split quills dyed red and
yellow; and the whole was fringed with the slender hoofs of young
fawns, that rattled as he walked.
The arrival of this deputation was the signal for another of
those ceremonials which occupy so much of Indian life; for no
being is more courtly and punctilious, and more observing of
etiquette and formality than an American savage.
The object of the deputation was to give notice of an intended
visit of the Shienne (or Cheyenne) tribe to the Arickara village
in the course of fifteen days.
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