HEM':] THE ASSINIBOIN 597 



discern the figures and tropes attributed to their oratory by fiction 

 writers. Metaphor is sometimes used, but not often. Their elo- 

 quence lies in the few words, bold assertions, and pointed questions 

 with which they clothe their ideas, added to fierce expression of 

 countenance and earnestness of gesticulation. 



Everything they say in a speech has a tendency to gain their ob- 

 ject if they have any, and Indians seldom speak otherwise. No set 

 forms are followed, their thoughts finding utterance a:s they arise, or 

 rather according to their feelings, and consequently make an impres- 

 sion on their auditors. The principal aims of the Indian speeches 

 we have heard were to gain something or to impress the mass with 

 the spirit of emulation, a desire for war or peace, and for the better 

 regulation of their national affairs. One or two addresses of this 

 kind have already been inserted and now follow two more, both 

 heard and interpreted by myself and copied from our records. We 

 fear in reading them a woeful disappointment on the part of novel 

 writers and romantic authors of Indian tales, but such as they are 

 they exhibit true samples of Indian eloquence at the present day, 

 however much it may differ from that in the time of the celebrated 

 Logan and others. In interpreting these speeches, the exact and 

 entire ideas of the Indians are preserved, though the words chosen 

 to express them are not always the same. We have had occasion to 

 remark on this head before that no Indian language admits of being 

 translated word for word; to do so, the purport desired by the 

 Indian would fail, injustice be done to his ideas as realized by him, 

 and a futility of words presented so devoid of order as to make no 

 impression on the person for whom they are intended. 



Nevertheless it is not to be inferred that the ideas have been im- 

 proved upon. They are entire, and only so because clothed in the 

 only kind of words sufficient to convey the real extent of their 

 signification. 



The occasion which produced the following speech by the Crazy 

 Bear was this: In the summer of 1837 the Assiniboin, with other 

 nations, were invited to attend the treaty at Laramie. It was with 

 great difficulty any of them could be persuaded to go, as the road 

 along the Yellowstone was beset with Blackfeet war parties ; but this 

 man with three others went in company with A. Culbertson, Esq., 

 who was authorized to conduct them. The Crazy Bear was, while at 

 the treaty, made chief of the Assiniboin Nation by Col. D. D. Mitch- 

 ell, the United States commissioner, and on his return to his people 

 repeated to the nation the stipulations of the treaty, together with 

 the "talk" held at the rendezvous, but, as usual with Indians, was 

 not believed. It also happened that in the ensuing spring, by some 

 delay, the merchandise intended for the Indians and promised them 



