“Brothers, be seated; but not on the prostrate forms of the forest, which the ruthless white man has felled to make unto himself a habitation. Like the big warrior Tecumseh, in council with the great white chief Harrison, we will sit upon the lap of our mother the earth—upon her breast we will sleep—the Pawnee has no roof but the blue sky, where dwelleth the Great Spirit—and he looks up to the shining stars, and they look down upon him—and they count the leaves of the forest and know the might of the Pawnees.” Every one, by this time, had taken a seat upon the ground, and all were silent. As the lights flashed o’er the group, they formed as grotesque a scene as I have ever witnessed. “Brothers,” he continued, “those eyes of the Great Spirit,” pointing upwards to the stars, “behold the rushing river, and they say to our fathers, who are in the happy hunting grounds of the blest, that, like it, is the might of the Pawnee when he rushes to battle. The white men are dogs—their carcasses drift in the tide—they are cast out on the shore, and the prairie-wolf fattens on them. “Brothers—the eyes of the Great Spirit behold the prairies and the forest, where the breath of the wintry wind bears the red fire through them—where the prairie-wolf flies, and the fire flies faster. Brothers, the white man is the prairie-wolf, and the Pawnee is the fire. “Brothers—when the forked fire from the right arm of the Great Spirit smites the mountain’s brow, the eagle soars upwards to his home in the clouds, but the snake crawls over the bare rock in the blast, and hides in the clefts and in the hollows and holes. Behold! the forked fire strikes the rock and scatters it as the big warrior would throw pebbles from his hand, and the soaring eagle darts from the clouds and the death-rattle of the snake is heard, and he hisses no more. “Brothers—the Pawnee is the eagle, the bird of the Great Spirit, and the white man is the crawling snake that the Great Spirit hates. “Brothers—the shining eyes of the Great Spirit sees all these things, and tells them to our fathers, who are in the happy hunting ground of the blest, and they say that some day, wrapped in the clouds, they will come and see us, for our land is like theirs.” This was said with so much eloquence, by the distinguished lawyer, that there was the silence of nearly a minute when he concluded. In the company was a lawyer named Short, who, strange to say, was just six feet three inches and a half high, and he had a client—which is stranger still—named Long, who was but five feet high. “Who has precedence, Judge Willard?” called out somebody in the crowd, breaking in upon the business of the occasion, as upon such occasions business always will be broken in upon—“who has precedence, Long or Short?”