My readers will naturally ask why some thirty Indians allowed a single hunter to emerge from his hiding-place, and why they did not compel him to surrender by a short siege? The Comanches are horse Indians, who can only effect anything when mounted, and hence never continue a pursuit into a thicket. They never undertake any martial exploit by night; and, moreover, the Indian, when he goes into action, has very different ideas from a white man; for while the latter always thinks he will be the last to fall, every Redskin believes that he will be the first to be hit. At the same time, these tribes set a far higher value on the life of one of their warriors than we white men do, and they often told me that we pale-faces grew out of the ground like mushrooms, while it took them eighteen years to produce a warrior. The tribes are not large; they consist of only one hundred and fifty to three hundred men; they have their chief and are quite independent of the other clans, although belonging to the same nations. The Comanches, for instance, reckon thirty thousand souls, spread over the whole of the Far West. In consequence of the many sanguinary wars which the different tribes wage together, it is frequently of great consequence to a clan, whether it counts ten men more or less, and hence the anxiety felt by the savages about the life of their warriors. The Northern Indians have assumed many of the habits of the white men, and are advancing gradually towards civilization; they nearly all carry fire-arms, wear clothes, till the ground, and their squaws, children, and old men, live in villages together. Our Southern Indians are all at the lowest stage of civilization, are generally cannibals, have no home, follow the buffalo, on whose flesh they live, and have assumed none of our customs. At times they may get hold of a horse-cloth or a bit, which they have taken from a hunter or stolen from a border settlement, but in other respects they are children of nature; they go about almost naked, and only carry weapons of their own manufacture. Their long lance is a very dangerous weapon, owing to the skill with which they use it; and the same is the case with their bows, from which they discharge arrows at a distance of fifty yards, with such accuracy and force, as to pierce the largest buffalo. The lasso (a plaited rope of leather) is another weapon which they employ with extraordinary skill; they throw the noose at one end over the head of an enemy, then gallop off in the opposite direction, and drag their captive to death. There are but very few foot Indians in the South; they generally live in the mountains, as they are always at war with the horse savages, and would be at a disadvantage on the plains; but they are by far the most dangerous denizens of these parts, as the most of them are supplied with fire-arms, and try to overpower their enemy treacherously at night. The Weicos form the chief tribe of