Some Stood Erect, Wrapped From Head To Foot In Their Long White Robes
Of Buffalo Hide.
Some sat together on the grass, holding their
shaggy horses by a rope, with their broad dark busts exposed to view
as they suffered their robes to fall from their shoulders.
Others
again stood carelessly among the throng, with nothing to conceal the
matchless symmetry of their forms; and I do not exaggerate when I say
that only on the prairie and in the Vatican have I seen such
faultless models of the human figure. See that warrior standing by
the tree, towering six feet and a half in stature. Your eyes may
trace the whole of his graceful and majestic height, and discover no
defect or blemish. With his free and noble attitude, with the bow in
his hand, and the quiver at his back, he might seem, but for his
face, the Pythian Apollo himself. Such a figure rose before the
imagination of West, when on first seeing the Belvidere in the
Vatican, he exclaimed, "By God, a Mohawk!"
When the sky darkened and the stars began to appear; when the prairie
was involved in gloom and the horses were driven in and secured
around the camp, the crowd began to melt away. Fires gleamed around,
duskily revealing the rough trappers and the graceful Indians. One
of the families near us would always be gathered about a bright
blaze, that displayed the shadowy dimensions of their lodge, and sent
its lights far up among the masses of foliage above, gilding the dead
and ragged branches.
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