“An instance of this occurred,” says Bossu, “when the French were in possession of New Orleans: a Chactaw, speaking very ill of them, said the Collapissas were their slaves; one of the latter, vexed at such words, killed him with his gun. The nation of Chactaws, the greatest and most numerous on the continent, armed immediately, and sent deputies to New Orleans to ask for the head of the murderer, who had put himself under the protection of the French. They offered presents to make up the quarrel, but the cruel people would not accept any! they even threatened to destroy the village of the Collapissas. To prevent the effusion of blood, the unhappy Indian was delivered up to them: the Sieur Ferrand was charged with the commission. The Indian was called Tichou; he stood upright in the midst of his own people and of his enemies, and said, “I am a true man, that is, I do not fear death; but I pity the fate of a wife and four children, whom I leave behind me very young; and of my father and mother, who are old, and for whom I got subsistence by hunting.” (He was the best hunter in the nation.) He had hardly spoken the last word of this short speech, when his father, penetrated with his son’s love, rose amidst the people, and spoke as follows:— “It is through courage that my son dies; but, being young and full of vigour, he is more fit than myself to provide for his mother, wife, and four little children: it is therefore necessary he should stay on earth to take care of them. As to myself, I am near the end of my career; I am no longer fit for anything: I cannot go like the roebuck, whose course is like the winds, unseen; I cannot sleep like the hare, with my ears never shut; but I have lived as a man, and will die as such, therefore I go to take his place.” At these words, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and their little children, shed tears round the brave old man: he embraced them for the last time. The relations of the dead Chactaw accepted the offer; after that, he laid himself on the trunk of a tree, and his head was cut off with one stroke of a hatchet. Every thing was made up by this death; but the young man was obliged to give them his father’s head: in taking it up, he said to it, “Pardon me thy death, and remember me in the country of spirits.”