Rocky Mountains. * 317 



purpose of hunting, and in the spring I will again visit your 

 town. You observed that you were apprehensive of being 

 killed as you approached our village, and you most probably 

 would have been so, coming as you did, late in the evening, 

 and without the usual formality of sending a messenger to ap- 

 prize us of your approach, had you not been accompanied by 

 the Big- knife, with whom you are so well acquainted. But we 

 have now smoked together, and I hope that the peace thus 

 established, may long continue. You say that you are in 

 want of mockasins, we will endeavour to give you one or 

 two, for your journey home. That is all I have to say." 



Herochshe then apologized for his unceremonious entrance 

 into the village, by saying that he knew it to be customary, 

 to send forward a runner on such an occasion, and he should 

 have done so, but his friend the Big-knife, whom he had pre- 

 viously consulted with that view, told him, that he had full 

 confidence in the magnanimity of the Otoes. 



Thus the ceremony was concluded, and peace restored be- 

 tween the two nations. 



Numerous are the anecdotes already related by various 

 authors, which go to show, that the desire of revenge for an 

 injury or insult, is remarkably permanent with the North 

 American Indian. It would almost seem, that neither time 

 nor circumstance can utterly eradicate it, and it is certain that 

 it is not always extinguished with the life of the offended in- 

 dividual, but that it sometimes descends as an inheritance, 

 to his posterity. 



A Puncaw warrior was killed in a quarrel, over the car- 

 cass of a bison, by a noted desperado of his own nation. The 

 deceased left two sons, the elder of whom, in the course of 

 a few years, became of sufficient age to hunt, and had the 

 good fortune, in his first essay, to kill a fine bison. Whilst 

 he was occupied in taking off the skin from his prey, he es- 

 pied the murderer of his father approaching, who took his 

 stand near the young hunter, and regarded him with a stern 



