When the red men wished to make bargains with the English, before interpreters had been trained to speak both languages, the counting was done by dropping beans, one by one, amid total silence. Woe to the offender who interrupted an Indian during this critical operation, or indeed at any time! An interruption was looked upon as an unpardonable affront. Once, in the time of Bacon's Rebellion, an Indian chief, accompanied by several of his tribe, came to negotiate a treaty of peace with the English. In the course of the Werrowance's address, one of his attendants ventured to put in a word. Instantly, the chief snatched a tomahawk from his girdle, split the poor fellow's skull, motioned to his companions to carry him out, and continued his speech as calmly as though nothing had happened. The lack of ceremony in the white men's address, and the frequency with which they interrupted, struck the Indian as amazing and unpardonable. There is a tradition that one of the early preachers strove to teach an old Indian brave the doctrine of the Trinity. The Indian heard him calmly to the end, and then began in his turn to tell of the Great Spirit who spoke in the thunder, and whose smile was the sunshine. In the midst of his discourse, the clergyman broke in, "But all this is not true." The Indian, turning to the circle around, remarked: "What sort of man is this? He has been talking for an hour of his three Gods, and now he will not let me tell of my one." The character of the Indian was a strange mixture of apparent contradictions. He would hunt and fish for a season, and then feast and make merry night and day while his supplies lasted. When they were exhausted, he would gird up his loins, and fast for a period long enough to end the life of a white man. He had an inordinate love of finery, upon which the English traded from the first. He would barter away a whole Winter's provisions of corn for a scarlet blanket or a bunch of gay-colored beads. Yet he was not without a natural shrewdness which enlightened him when he was being cheated. The story runs that some of the early missionaries taught the savages that their salvation depended on catching for them shad, which they sold to the settlers. In the course of time the Indians discovered the trick, and drove out the deceivers. Years afterward, another mission was established, and the first priest took as his text, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!" The Indians gathered round the preacher when the sermon was ended, and one of the tribe said: "White man, you speak in fine words of the waters of life; but before we decide on what we have heard, we would like to know _whether any shad swim in those waters_!"