Campfire Stories of Indian Character 507 



In all our sad Indian history there is nothing to exceed in 

 pathetic eloquence the surrender speech of the Nez Perce 

 chief: 



"I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking-Glass 

 is dead. Toohulhulsote is dead. The old men are all dead. 

 It is the young who say ' yes ' or ' no. ' He who led the young 

 men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little 

 children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have 

 run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one 

 knows where they are — perhaps freezing to death. I want 

 to have time to look for my children and see how many of them 

 I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear 

 me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From 

 where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever. " — (Sec. 

 War. 3.) (Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. 14, p. 714-15.) 



WHITE CALF, CHIEF OF THE BLACKFEET 



(Died at Washington, Jan. 29, 1903) 

 (By George Bird Grinnell) 



For sixty years, as boy, young man and fierce warrior, 

 he had roamed the prairie, free as the other wild creatures 

 who traversed it, and happy in his freedom. 



He had been but a Httle fellow when the white men first 

 came into the country to trade, but he was old enough to 

 have been present, and was well enough thought of in the 

 tribe, at the signing of Governor Stevens's treaty with the 

 Prairie people in 1855, to affix his mark — as The Father — 

 to that paper. As yet the coming of the white man meant 

 Httle to him and to his people. It furnished them a market 

 for their robes and furs, for which they received in exchange 

 guns and ammunition, which made them more than ever 

 terrible to their enemies. The whole broad prairie was 

 still theirs to camp on and to hunt over. Their lodges were 

 pitched along the streams from the Red Deer River on the 



