in which hospitality was held among them. Still even The Indians 
now it is custom in most tribes that if even an here- 
ditary enemy seeks refuge in the tent of the chief, 
not a hair of his head is hurt; though, to be sure, if 
he is found next day in the prairie or on the moun- 
tain his scalp is infallibly lost. The question has 
often been asked whether the Indian has real courage 
or is cowardly by nature. Whoever knows the In- 
dian’s mode of life must concede if courage is by any 
means capable of development in a human being, such 
a life is calculated to inspire a man with fearlessness 
and contempt of death. That the Indians usually 
succumb to the weapons of civilization, and the fact 
that a few determined whites repel their attacks even 
in greatly superior numbers, is not proof against their 
courage, often verging on fool-hardiness. Their sys- 
tem of waging war, moreover, often causes us to re- 
gard that as cowardice which is really plan and cal- 
culation. They consider it, for instance, folly to ad- 
vance toward the enemy in open battle array; and 
Black Hawk, the renowned chief of the Sacs and 
Foxes, when present at a great maneuver in New 
York, during which several batteries were stormed, 
could not wonder enough at the idiocy of sacrificing 
hundreds of warriors in this way, since the batteries 
might be taken at night by surprise without loss of a 
man. 
The Indian tribes which now rove through the 
great Missouri territory are chiefly the Kansas, the 
Sioux, and the Pawnees. In and about the Rocky 
