184 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 43 



our Suns bad told them that these warriors of fix'e would subject them after 

 having subjected the ancients of the country, as we have learned has happened. 



" The great Sun and the Suns who were with him were unable to induce them 

 to follow them, took their farewells, therefore, in order to come alone to rejoin 

 us here for fear lest the warriors of fire should make them slaves, which they 

 feared more than death." 



I did not fail to ask him who these vvarrioi's of fire were. "They were," 

 said he, "bearded men, white but swarthy. They were called warriors of fire 

 because their arms threw fire with great noise and killed at a great distance. 

 They had other very heavy arms besides, which killed many people at a time, 

 and which made the earth tremble like thunder. They had come on floating 

 villages from the side where the sun rises. They conquered the ancients of the 

 country, of whom they killed as mansr as there are spears of grass in the 

 prairies, and in the beginning they were good friends of our brothers, but ulti- 

 mately they made them submit as well as the ancients of the counti'y, as our 

 Suns had foreseen and had foretold to them." 



What the guardian of the temple had told me of the ancients of the country 

 naturally led me to ask him who these people were. Here is what he answered : 



" We have always called them the ancients of the country because the ancient 

 word teaches us that when we arrived in that country we found them there in 

 great numbers and they appeared to have been there a long time, for they 

 inhabited the entire coast of the great water which is toward the setting sun, 

 as far as the cold country on this side of the sun," and very far along the coast 

 beyond the sun. They had a very large number of large and small villages, 

 all of which were built of stones and in which there were houses large enough 

 to lodge an entire village. Their temples were built with much skill and labor. 

 They made very beautiful things with all kinds of materials, such as gold, 

 silver, stones, wood, fabrics, feathers, and many other things in which they 

 made their skill appear, as well as in manufacturing arms aiyl in making war. 



" We knew nothing of them on our arrival in this country. It was only a 

 long time afterward and when we were multiplied that we heard of each other 

 and encountered each other with equal surprise on both sides. They did not 

 war together at all then, and the two nations lived in i)eace during a great 

 number of years until one of their chiefs who was very powerful and a great 

 warrior undertook to make them his slaves and finally succeeded, and then he 

 also wished to subject ns. It was that which obliged us, as I have told you, 

 to abandon that land to come to inhabit this." 



" But you yourselves," said I to him, " from whence are you come? " " The 

 ancient word," replied he, " says nothing of what land we came from. All 

 that it teaches us is that our fathers to come here followed the sun and came 

 with it from where it rises, that they were a long time on the journe.v, saw them- 

 selves on the point of dying utterly and found themselves brought into this 

 land without searching for it. Do not ask me more, for the ancient word says 

 nothing besides and no old man will ever tell you what I do not tell you." ^ 



The amount of truth concoalcd in this narrative will perhaps never 

 be known, es[)ecially as there are so many discrepancies between the 

 topography of the country described by the chief oiiardian and tliat 

 we are acquainted with to the southwest of the Natchez country. At 

 the same time there is no good reason to believe that Du Pratz has 

 fabricated the narrative entire, though he very likely distorted it un- 



" This seems to contain tlie European idea of two cold regions witli a torrid zone be- 

 tween, and tlierefore must Ije Du Pratz's own words, 

 f" Du I'ratz, lli«t. do La Louisiane, in, 02-70. 



