Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw advancing a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active, muscular, with a gait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s “crown,” a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white swan’s feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in front, and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down--all so deftly constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole could not be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To the fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered, and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the money of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in active circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It has been generally known under the generic name “wampum,” although several of the Southern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-ack.” It was made in tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of the conch and mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the Indian to polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it the hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and arms were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his face, of a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All his flesh glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent. MacDonnell had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch Presbyterian persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical phrases sometimes came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful countenance,” he quoted, still gazing at the grim face and figure. So intently he gazed, indeed, that the Indian hesitated, doubting if the Highland officer recognized him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of a green locust hard by and holding it aloft at one side, after the manner of a peaceful embassy, he continued his stately advance until within a yard of the silent Scotchman, also advancing. Then they both paused. “_Ish la chu; Angona?_” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you come, a friend?) With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained by the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response. “_Arabre--O, Angona_,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle sheepishly, and without the _ore rotunda_ effect of the elocution of the Indian. The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging him in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the Scotchman was incapacitated for playing. “Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.