Being Called Upon To Explain These Remarkable
Proceedings, Tete Rouge Observed That He Knew From Experience What
Effect The Presence Of A Military Man In His Uniform Always Had Upon
The Mind Of An Indian, And He Thought The Arapahoes Ought To Know
That There Was A Soldier In The Party.
Meeting Arapahoes here on the Arkansas was a very different thing
from meeting the same Indians among their native mountains.
There
was another circumstance in our favor. General Kearny had seen them
a few weeks before, as he came up the river with his army, and
renewing his threats of the previous year, he told them that if they
ever again touched the hair of a white man's head he would
exterminate their nation. This placed them for the time in an
admirable frame of mind, and the effect of his menaces had not yet
disappeared. I was anxious to see the village and its inhabitants.
We thought it also our best policy to visit them openly, as if
unsuspicious of any hostile design; and Shaw and I, with Henry
Chatillon, prepared to cross the river. The rest of the party
meanwhile moved forward as fast as they could, in order to get as far
as possible from our suspicious neighbors before night came on.
The Arkansas at this point, and for several hundred miles below, is
nothing but a broad sand-bed, over which a few scanty threads of
water are swiftly gliding, now and then expanding into wide shallows.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 407 of 486
Words from 108371 to 108622
of 129303
