Late Into The
Night The Fires Were Still Glowing Upon The Groups Of Feasters
Engaged In This Savage Banquet Around Them.
Several hunters sat down by the fire in Kongra-Tonga's lodge to talk
over the day's exploits.
Among the rest, Mene-Seela came in. Though
he must have seen full eighty winters, he had taken an active share
in the day's sport. He boasted that he had killed two cows that
morning, and would have killed a third if the dust had not blinded
him so that he had to drop his bow and arrows and press both hands
against his eyes to stop the pain. The firelight fell upon his
wrinkled face and shriveled figure as he sat telling his story with
such inimitable gesticulation that every man in the lodge broke into
a laugh.
Old Mene-Seela was one of the few Indians in the village with whom I
would have trusted myself alone without suspicion, and the only one
from whom I would have received a gift or a service without the
certainty that it proceeded from an interested motive. He was a
great friend to the whites. He liked to be in their society, and was
very vain of the favors he had received from them. He told me one
afternoon, as we were sitting together in his son's lodge, that he
considered the beaver and the whites the wisest people on earth;
indeed, he was convinced they were the same; and an incident which
had happened to him long before had assured him of this.
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