Young Rival Warriors Look
Askance At Him; Vermilion-Cheeked Girls Gaze In Admiration, Boys
Whoop And Scream In A Thrill Of Delight, And Old Women Yell Forth His
Name And Proclaim His Praises From Lodge To Lodge.
Mahto-Tatonka, to come back to him, was the best of all our Indian
friends.
Hour after hour and day after day, when swarms of savages
of every age, sex, and degree beset our camp, he would lie in our
tent, his lynx eye ever open to guard our property from pillage.
The Whirlwind invited us one day to his lodge. The feast was
finished, and the pipe began to circulate. It was a remarkably large
and fine one, and I expressed my admiration of its form and
dimensions.
"If the Meneaska likes the pipe," asked The Whirlwind, "why does he
not keep it?"
Such a pipe among the Ogallalla is valued at the price of a horse. A
princely gift, thinks the reader, and worthy of a chieftain and a
warrior. The Whirlwind's generosity rose to no such pitch. He gave
me the pipe, confidently expecting that I in return should make him a
present of equal or superior value. This is the implied condition of
every gift among the Indians as among the Orientals, and should it
not be complied with the present is usually reclaimed by the giver.
So I arranged upon a gaudy calico handkerchief, an assortment of
vermilion, tobacco, knives, and gunpowder, and summoning the chief to
camp, assured him of my friendship and begged his acceptance of a
slight token of it.
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