330 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



metamorpliosed, ou his return from Washington ; and, in this plight was he strutting 

 and whistling Yankee Doodle, ahout the deck of the steamer that was wending its 

 way up the mighty Missouri, and taking him to his native land again, where he was 

 soon to light his pipe and cheer the wigwam fireside with tales of novelty and won- 

 der. 



"Well, Ba'tiste, I traveled with this new-fangled gentleman until he reached his 

 home, two thousand miles ahove Saint Louis, and I could never look upon him for a 

 moment without excessive laughter at the ridiculous figure he cut — the strides, the 

 angles, the stiifness of this traveling beau ! Oh, Ba'tiste, if you could have seen him 

 you would have split your sides with laughter ; he was 'puss in boots,' precisely! 



" 'By g^r, he is good compare! Ha-ha, monsieur: (pard6n) I am laugh; I am see 

 him w'en he is arrive in Yellowstone; yon know I was dere. I am laugh much w'en 

 he is got off de boat, and all de Assineboines was dere to look. Oh, diable! I am 

 laugh almost to die; I am split! — suppose he was pretty stiff, ha? — 'cob on spindle,' 

 ha ? Oh, by gar, he is coot pour laugh — pour rire ? ' 



"After Wi-jun-jon had got home, and passed the usual salutations among his 

 friends, he commenced the simple narration of scenes he had passed through, and of 

 things he had beheld among the whites; wliich appeared to them so much like fiction 

 that it was impossible to believe them, and they set him down as an impostor. 'He 

 has been 'they said' among the whites, who are great liars, and all he has learned is 

 to come home and tell lies.' He sank rapidly into disgrace in his tribe ; his high 

 claims to political eminence all vanished ; he was reputed worthless — the greatest liar 

 of his nation ; the chiefs shunned hira and passed him by as one of the tribe who was 

 lost ; yet the ears of the gossiping portion of the tribe were open, and the camp-fire 

 circle and the wigwam fireside gave silent audience to the whispered narratives of 

 the 'traveled Indian.' * * * 



" The next day after he had arrived among his friends the superfluous part of his 

 coat (which was a laced frock) was converted into a pair of leggings for his wife ; aud 

 his hat-band of silver lace furnished her a magnificent pair of garters. The remainder 

 of the coat, curtailed of its original length, was seen buttoned upon the shoulders of 

 his brother, over and above a pair of leggings of buckskin ; and Wi-jun-jon was 

 parading about among his gaping friends with a bow and quiver slung over his 

 shoulders, which, sans coat, exhibited a fine linen shirt with studs and sleeve-buttons. 

 His broadsword kept its place, but about noon his boots gave way to a pair of gar- 

 nished moccasins ; and in such plight he gossiped away the day among his friends, 

 while his heart spoke so freely and so eifectually from the bung-hole of a little keg of 

 whisky, which he had brought the whole way (as one of the choicest presents made 

 him at Washington), that his tongue became silent. 



" One of his little fair innamoratas, or 'catch-crumbs,' such as live in the halo of 

 all great men, fixed her eyes and her affections upon his beautiful silk braces, and the 

 next day, while the keg was yet dealing out its kindnesses, he was seen paying visits 

 to the lodges of his old acquaintance, swaggering about, with his keg under his arm, 

 whistling Yankee Doodle and AVashington's Grand March; his white shirt, or that 

 part of it that had been flapping in the wind, had been shockingly tithed ; his panta- 

 loons of blue, laced with gold, were razeed into a pair of comfortable leggings ; his 

 bow and quiver were slung, and his broadsword, which trailer! ou the ground, had 

 sought the center of gravity, and taken a position between his legs, and dragging 

 behind him, served as arudder to steer him over the ' earth's troubled surface.' 



" ' Ha-hah-hagh ah o r— oo k, eh bien.' 



" Two days' revel of this kind had drawn from his keg all its charms ; and in the 

 mellowness of his heart, all his finery had vanished, and all of its appendages, ex- 

 cvept his umbrella, to which his heart's strongest affections still clung, and with it, 

 and imder it, in rude dress of buckskin, he was afterwards to be seen, in all sorts ol 

 weather, acting the fop and the bean as well as he could, with his limited means. lu 

 this plight, and in this dress, with his umbrella always in his hand (as the only re- 



