But When He
Feels Himself Attacked By A Mysterious Evil, Before Whose Insidious
Assaults His Manhood Is Wasted, And His Strength Drained Away, When
He Can See No Enemy To Resist And Defy, The Boldest Warrior Falls
Prostrate At Once.
He believes that a bad spirit has taken
possession of him, or that he is the victim of some charm.
When
suffering from a protracted disorder, an Indian will often abandon
himself to his supposed destiny, pine away and die, the victim of his
own imagination. The same effect will often follow from a series of
calamities, or a long run of ill success, and the sufferer has been
known to ride into the midst of an enemy's camp, or attack a grizzly
bear single-handed, to get rid of a life which he supposed to lie
under the doom of misfortune.
Thus after all his fasting, dreaming, and calling upon the Great
Spirit, the White Shield's war party was pitifully broken up.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TRAPPERS
In speaking of the Indians, I have almost forgotten two bold
adventurers of another race, the trappers Rouleau and Saraphin.
These men were bent on a most hazardous enterprise. A day's journey
to the westward was the country over which the Arapahoes are
accustomed to range, and for which the two trappers were on the point
of setting out. These Arapahoes, of whom Shaw and I afterward fell
in with a large village, are ferocious barbarians, of a most brutal
and wolfish aspect, and of late they had declared themselves enemies
to the whites, and threatened death to the first who should venture
within their territory.
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