Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
others can speak. I listen—I have said.”
This speech was received by a slight response by some of Hoo-o-o-o
and by the majority in silence. After a few minutes’ interval he
was replied to by another chief, the third or fourth from where he
sat. This was a savage, warlike, one-eyed Indian, and his speech was
characteristic. He said: “He differed from all the old chief had said
regarding their enemies. Individually as a man and as their leader he
liked his father, the chief, but he must be growing old and childish to
advise them to take to smoke the tobacco of their enemies, the Crows.
Tell the whites to take it back to them. It stinks, and if smoked
would taste of the blood of our nearest relations. He thought (he
said) his old father (the chief) should make a journey to the banks of
the Yellowstone, and speak to the grinning skulls of 30 lodges of his
children, and hear their answer. Would they laugh? Would they dance?
Would they beg for Crow tobacco or cry for Crow horses? If horses were
wanted in camp, let the young men go to war and steal and take them
as he had done—as he intended to do as long as a Crow Indian had a
horse. What if in the attempt they left their bones to bleach on the
prairie? It would be but dying like men! For his part it always pleased
him to see a young man’s skull; the teeth were sound and beautiful,
appearing to smile and say, ‘I have died when I should and not waited
at home until my teeth were worn to the gums by eating dried meat.’ The
young men (he said) will make war—must have war—and, as far as his
influence went, should have war. I have spoken.”
This speech was received with a loud and prolonged grunt of approbation
by more than two-thirds of the assembly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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