“The houses were far apart, built of logs, and set in the midst of mud and filth; but in a greater building than all the others, we heard the music of the dance, the sound of many voices, and all the echoes of thoughtless enjoyment. There were the French from New Orleans and St. Louis, boatmen and traders upon the great river Mississippi, and the Spanish of the settlement, with the Americans from the Ohio and the northern lands. We knew that we should see many we had known, among the people there, and with Brother Anselmo I entered the room. It was a great hall, with floors of sawed timber, very smooth for dancing, and not like the floors of hewn logs that were in the houses of that time. There were many candles about the walls, and also torches of lightwood that flared and hissed and threw black shadows of the dancers across the floor. When they saw us, there was silence, and no one moved until we had been seated in a part of the hall where we could watch the others. Never have I seen, Señores, so gay and so thoughtless a gathering; there were beautiful women there, and the bravest of men, and they were young. I saw the soft light of love in the eyes of men who had dared the tomahawk of the Indian as they had dared the soldiers of Napoleon and the dangers of the deep, and the smiles that answered them were sweeter than those of Fortune or of Fame. “As the night wore on, we looked from the open door of the hall, across the swirling waters of the Mississippi. The stars were dim with haze, and the air was still and soft and damp; it seemed hard to breathe it down deep in the lungs, and the boatmen looked for rain. It was eleven hours of the night, when wild sounds were heard without, and all the frolic ceased. The reports of many guns and the war-cries of Indians were soon recognized, and they grew louder and came nearer. The people were saying to each other, ‘The war-party is returning from the Chickasaw lands.’ It was not long before there came into the room many white men and as many as twenty Chickasaws, daubed with paint and covered with mud. They had been in pursuit of some of Little Warrior’s braves, who had hidden in the swamps after the murder of the white families along their trail. The chief, Big Tree, held up for all to see the head of one of the Creeks, a sight, Señores, that chilled my blood, for I knew it to be the head of White Corn, whose house was built on the Coosa River, and whose hospitality was always to be counted upon.