The chief of the Tappage village was sitting directly opposite the speaker; his eye was dark as midnight: his teeth were bared, and both hands were tightly grasped round his own throat; but he remained silent until the speech had finished. When the White Plume had taken his seat, half a dozen Pawnees sprang to their feet; but the Tappage chief waved them down: three times did he essay to speak, and as often, did he fail. He rubbed his hand across his throat, to keep down his anger; then stepping out, and fixing his eye on that of the Konza chief—in the calm, quiet voice of smothered rage, he commenced his answer: he proceeded; he grew more and more excited—indulging a vein of biting irony. The White Plume quailed, and his eye drooped, beneath the searching, scornful glance of his wild enemy. Still the Pawnee went on: he represented the injury which first kindled the war between the two nations. “My young men,” said he, “visited the Konzas as friends: the Konzas treated them as enemies. They were strangers in the Konza tribe, and the Konzas fell upon them, and slew them—and concealed their death.” He then entered into the particulars of the quarrel, which unfortunately for the Konzas, were strongly against them. The chief of the latter tribe, received the answer with great philosophy; nor did he attempt to utter any thing in reply. Perhaps, too, he did not wish to invite a second attack, from so rough a quarter. When the Pawnee had finished, the commissioner interposed, and after a short time, harmony was restored, and several of the inferior chiefs made their harangues. They were of a more calm and conciliating nature, and gradually tended to soothe the inflamed feelings of their foes. The council lasted until sunset, when the terms of the treaty were finally adjusted. On this occasion I was made sensible of the justice of the complaint generally made, by those who have had public negotiations with the savage tribes, of the insufficiency of the interpreters through whom they are obliged to receive the sentiments and language of the Indians. They are with few exceptions, ignorant and illiterate. Those we employed, spoke a wretched French patois, and a still more wretched English. On such, even the high imaginative vein, the poetical thought, which run through Indian eloquence, is entirely lost. There was not a savage who addressed us, who did not at times, clothe his ideas in beautiful attire, and make use of wild and striking similes, drawn from the stores of his only instructress, nature. This we ascertained from some persons present of cultivated minds, and who were well versed in the Indian tongues. As to the interpreters, they reduced every thing to a bald, disjointed jargon.