Upon receiving this assurance the Osage chief suffered his prisoner to depart, restoring to him his horse, and presenting him with several trinkets in token of friendship. The first use which the latter made of his recovered liberty was to invite Mahéga to return with him to the Upsaroka village, an invitation which, to the surprise of his followers, he accepted without hesitation. With a parting caution to Toweno to keep his men watchful and ready against a surprise, he threw a battle–robe[63] over his broad shoulders, and, armed with his rifle, tomahawk, and knife, accompanied his new ally towards the Crow village. On approaching it, he found that it consisted of more than a hundred lodges, containing, probably, two hundred men, besides women and children. Great was their surprise when they saw the gigantic stranger advancing with his conductor towards the lodge of the principal chief, to whom he was nearly related. The mien and bearing of the Osage, as he entered the lodge, were alone sufficient to secure for him a courteous invitation to sit in the place of honour; while the Crow who had been his prisoner briefly narrated to the head chief the circumstances under which the stranger visited his camp. The pipe of friendship having been smoked in due form, the Crow chief whispered a few words in the ear of a youth beside him, who disappeared immediately, and the party sat in silence until he returned, accompanied by an individual whose appearance was singular in the extreme: his head was of an enormous size, and covered with black shaggy hair; his features were coarse and forbidding, nor was their expression improved by a patch of leather plastered over the cavity which had once been occupied by his left eye; his shoulders were broad, and his arms of unusual length; his stature was scarcely five feet, and his legs were bandy, with clumsy knees, like those of a buffalo–bull: this unsightly ogre rejoiced in the name of Besha–ro–Kata, signifying, in the Crow language, “the little bison,” but he was commonly called “Besha,” or the “Bison,” the diminutive termination being omitted. His origin was involved in a mystery that neither he nor any one else could satisfactorily explain, for he had been born in that wild region watered by the Arkansas, and his mother, a Comanche woman, was said to have divided her favours, previous to the birth of Besha, between a half–bred trader to Santa Fé, and a runaway negro from one of the southern slave–states; she died while he was yet an infant; and as he had never been owned or claimed by either of his reputed fathers, it was a miracle that he ever lived to manhood.