CROW WAR PARTY. 129 



Thus promised, he proceeded to explain the great truths of Chris- 

 tianity, and averred that he had come to do tliem good, and to tell them 

 how to be happy; asserting that, unless they listened to him and wor- 

 shipped the Good Spirit in the manner he pointed out, they could never, 

 at death, reach that happy country into which good people alone find 

 admittance. 



One of the chiefs upon this arose and made the following reply : 



" My white brother is a stranger to us. He talks bad of us, and he talks 

 bad of his own people. 



"He does this because he is ignorant. He thinks my people, like his, 

 are wicked. Thus far he is wrong ! 



" Who were they that killed the very good man of whom he tells us ? 

 None of them were red men ! 



" The red man will die for good men, who are his friends ; — he will not 

 kill them ! 



" Let my pale-face brother talk to the white man — his own people — they 

 are very bad. He says, he would do us good ! He does no good to chide 

 us and say we are very bad. 



" True we are bad ; and were we bad as the pale-faces it would become 

 us to listen to him ! 



" Would my brother do us good ? Then, let him tell us how to make 

 powder and we will believe in the sincerity of his professions ; — but let him 

 not belie us by saying we are bad like the pale-faces !" 



These Indians rarely kill the women and children of an enemy when in 

 their power, and, in this particular, they show themselves unlike most of 

 the wild tribes found on the American continent. 



They are a brave and noble people, prosecuting their endless hostilities 

 against the Sioux and Blackfeet, (the only nations with whom they are at 

 variance,) not so much to gratify an innate love for war, as from a just 

 hatred of the meanness of those they war against. 



In the summer of 1842, a war-party of some two hundred Crows inva- 

 ded the Sioux country by way of Laramie pass, and penetrated as far as 

 Fort Platte, and beyond, in pursuit of their enemy. 



A few miles above the Fort, having met with a lone French engage, who 

 was rather ^reen in all that pertains to Indians as well as some other 

 things, they began by signs to enquire of him the whereabouts of the La- 

 cotas, (the sign for them being a transverse pass of the right front-finger 

 across the throat.) 



TJie poor Frenchman, mistaking this for the avowed intention of cuiting 

 Jiis throat, commenced bellowing a la calf, accompanying the music by an 

 industrious appliance of crosses in double-quick time — not forgetting to 

 make use of sundry most earnest invocations of the blessed Virgin to gra- 

 ciously vouchsafe to him deliverance from impending danger. 



The Indians, perceiving his strange conduct to be the result of fear, felt 

 disposed to have a little fun at his expense; so, mounting him upon ahorse, 

 they bound his hands and feet and guarded him to a post of the Ameri- 

 can Fur Company as a prisoner. 



