Happily for the main body, they found themselves at this juncture among Indians, who were amicably disposed. The lands on both sides of the Missouri in particular, were owned by the Pottawatamies and Omahas, two tribes whom unjust treatment by our United States, had the effect of rendering most auspiciously hospitable to strangers whom they regarded as persecuted like themselves. The Pottawatamies on the eastern side, are a nation from whom the United States bought some years ago a number of hundred thousand acres of the finest lands they have ever brought into market. Whatever the bargain was, the sellers were not content with it; the people saying, their leaders were cheated, made drunk, bribed, and all manner of naughty things besides. No doubt this was quite as much of a libel on the fair fame of this particular Indian treaty, as such stories generally are; for the land to which the tribe was removed in pursuance of it, was admirably adapted to enforce habits of civilized thrift. It was smooth prairie, wanting in timber, and of course in game; and the humane and philanthropic might rejoice therefore that necessity would soon indoctrinate its inhabitants into the practice of agriculture. An impracticable few, who may have thought these advantages more than compensated by the insalubrity of their allotted resting place, fled to the extreme wilds, where they could find deer and woods, and rocks and running water, and where I believe they are roaming to this day. The remainder, being what the political vocabulary designates on such occasions as Friendly Indians, were driven--marched is the word--galley slaves are marched thus to Barcelona and Toulon--marched from the Mississippi to the Missouri, and planted there. Discontented and unhappy, they had hardly begun to form an attachment for this new soil, when they were persuaded to exchange it for their present Fever Patch upon the Kaw or Kansas River. They were under this second sentence of transportation when the Mormons arrived among them. They were pleased with the Mormons. They would have been pleased with any whites who would not cheat them, nor sell them whiskey, nor whip them for their poor gipsey habits, nor bear themselves indecently toward their women, many of whom among the Pottawatamies, especially those of nearly unmixed French descent, are singularly comely, and some of them educated. But all Indians have something like a sentiment of reverence for the insane, and admire those who sacrifice, without apparent motive, their worldly welfare to the triumph of an idea. They understand the meaning of what they call a great vow, and think it the duty of the right-minded to lighten the votary's penance under it. To this feeling they united the sympathy of fellow-sufferers for those who could talk to them of their own Illinois, and tell the story how from it they also had been ruthlessly expelled.