320 WILD SPOETS IN THE SOUTH. 



right under the guns of the fort, and the sutlers traded 

 with them as with the soldiers. These chiefs retained 

 all their stoic dignity of manner and gaudiness of dress. 

 Regarding themselves as in a measure in council, they 

 dressed with care, and studied to impose on the respect 

 of the whites or each other. Some of them were men 

 of much influence and honor among their own people, 

 nearly all of them were objects of great curiosity to the 

 troops who had been so many months in their ^^ursuit, 

 and who connected their names with some bloody massa- 

 cre, or hard-fought battle. 



The leader of the present band was our old friend Hal- 

 leck Tustenuggee, who had left the marks of his black fin- 

 gers at Far Away, on our last visit there. He was standing 

 at the gateway as we came in, the war paint washed from 

 his face, and his heavy black hair drawn back from his 

 head, and plaited down behind with the feathers of the 

 roseate spoonbill ; a heavy blue blanket hung from one 

 shoulder, in which was wrapj^ed one arm, and the other 

 hung freely at his side. His bearing was noble as words 

 could describe, and if there had not been in his eye the 

 glittering cruelty of his race, something akin to the fas- 

 cination in the tiger's eye that stops you as you pass his 

 cage, he would have stood with credit for a Koman gen- 

 eral. His wife and children were with him, and two sub- 

 ordinate chiefs with their wives. The main body of his 

 band, twenty-five in number, were a few miles distant, 

 near the camp at Warm Springs, participating with all 

 the abandon of the native character in games of ball and 



