"Fathers and warriors, we heard these words, but we knew not what to do. We feared not the Walkullas; the God of War(7), we saw, had given them into our hands. But who were the strange tribe? Were they armed as we were, and was their Great Medicine[A] like ours? Warriors, you all knew the Young Eagle, the son of the Old Eagle, who is here with us; but his wings are feeble, and he flies no more to the feast of blood. Now, the Young Eagle feared nothing but shame. He said, 'I see many men sit around a fire, I will go and see who they are.' He went. The Old Eagle looks at me as if he would say, Why went not the head warrior himself? I will tell you. The Mad Buffalo is a head taller than the tallest man of his tribe. Can the moose crawl into the fox's hole?--can the swan hide himself under a hazle-leaf? The Young Eagle was little, save in his soul. He was not full grown, save in his heart. He could go, and not be seen or heard. He was the cunning black snake, which creeps silently in the grass, and none think him near till he strikes; not the foolish rattlesnake, which makes a great noise to let you know he is coming. [Footnote A: Great Medicine, Supreme Being; medicine simply means a spirit.] "He came back, and told us that which made us weep. He told us, there were many strange men a little way from us, whose faces were white, and who wore no skins, whose cabins were white as the snow upon the Backbone of the Great Spirit[A], flat at the top, and moving with the wind like the reeds on the bank of a river; that they did not talk like the Walkullas, but spoke a strange tongue, the like of which he had never heard before. Many of our warriors would have turned back to their own lands; the Flying Squirrel said it was not cowardice to do so. But the Mad Buffalo never turns on his heel till he has tasted of the blood of his foes. And the Young Eagle said he had eaten the bitter root, and put on the new mocassins, and had been made a man, and his father and the old warriors would cry shame on him if he took no scalp. Both he and the Mad Buffalo said they would go and attack the Walkullas and their allies alone. But the young warriors said they would also go to the battle, and with a great heart, as their fathers had done. And then the Shawanos rushed upon their foes. [Footnote A: Backbone of the Great Spirit, the Alleghany Mountains.]