THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 469 



along with great coyness, dragging ns towards the shore, as long as their bodies, in 

 a crouching position, could possibly be half concealed under the water, when they 

 gave our boat the last push for the shore, and raising a loud and exulting laugh, 

 plunged back again into the river ; leaving us the only alternative of sitting still 

 where we were, or of stepping out into the water at half leg deep and of wading to 

 the shore, which we at once did, and soon escaped from the view of our little tor- 

 mentors and the numerous lookers-on, on our way to the upper village, which I have 

 before mentioned. 



MR. CATLIN'S HORSE RACE. 



Here I was very politely treated by the Yellow Moccasin, quite an old man, and who 

 seemed to be chief of this band or family, constituting their little community of 30 

 or 40 lodges, averaging perhaps 20 persons to each. I was feasted in this man's lodge 

 and afterwards invited to accompany him and several others to a beautiful prairie, a 

 mile or so above the village where the young men and young women of this town 

 and many from the village, below had assembled for their amusements, the chief of 

 which seemed to be that of racing their horses. Iu the midst of these scenes, after I 

 had been for some time a looker on, and had felt some considerable degree of sym- 

 pathy for a fine looking young fellow whose horse had been twice beaten on the 

 course and whose losses had been considerable, for which his sister, a very modest 

 and pretty girl, was most piteously howling and crying, I selected and brought for- 

 ward an ordinary looking pony, that was evidently too fat and too sleek to run against 

 his fine-limbed little horse that had disappointed his high hopes, and I began to com- 

 ment extravagantly upon its muscle, &c, when I discovered him evidently cheering 

 up with the hope of getting me and my pony on to the turf with him, for which he 

 soon made me a proposition ; and I, having lauded the limbs of my little nag too 

 much to "back out," agreed to run a short pace with him of half a mile for three 

 yards of scarlet cloth, a knife, and half a dozen strings of beads, which I was willing 

 to stake against a handsome pair of leggings which he was wearing at the time. The 

 greatest imaginable excitement was now raised amongst the crowd by this arrange- 

 ment ; to see a white man preparing to run with an Indian jockey, and that with a 

 scrub of a pony, in whose powers of running no Indian had the least confidence. 

 Yet, there was no one in the crowd who dared to take up the several other little bets 

 I was willing to tender (merely for their amusement and for their final exultation) 

 owing undoubtedly to the bold and confident manner in which I had ventured on the 

 merits of this little horse, which the tribe had all overlooked, and needs must have 

 some medicine about it. 



So far was this panic carried that even my champion was ready to withdraw ; but 

 his friends encouraged him at length, and we galloped our horses off to the other end 

 of the course where we were to start, and where we were accompanied by a number 

 of horsemen who were to witness the " set off." Some considerable delay here took 

 place from a condition which was then named to me, and which I had not observed 

 before, that in all the races of this day every rider was to run entirely denuded and 

 ride a naked horse. Here I was completely balked, and having no one by me to inter- 

 pret a word, I was quite at a loss to decide what was best to do. I found however 

 that remonstrance was of little avail, and as I had volunteered in this thing to gratify 

 and flatter them, I thought it best not positively to displease them in this ; so I laid 

 off my clothes and straddled the naked back of my round and glossy little pony by 

 the side of my competitor, who was also mounted and stripped to the skin and pant- 

 ing with a restless anxiety for the start. 



Reader, did you ever imagine that in the middle of a man's life there could be a 

 thought or a feeling so new to him as to throw him instantly back to infancy, with a 

 new world and a new genins before him — started afresh to navigate and breathe the 

 elements of naked and untasted liberty, which clothe him in their cool and silken 

 robes that float about him, and wafting their life-inspiring folds to his inmost lungs? 



