clii 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
calm, I laid the reins on my horse’s neck, to listen to a Mocking 
Bird,' the first I had heard in the Western country, which, perched 
on the top of a dead tree before the door, was pouring out a torrent 
of melody. I think I never heard so excellent a performer. I 
had alighted, and was fastening my horse, when hearing the report 
of a rifle immediately beside me, I looked up and saw the poor 
Mocking Bird fluttering to the ground. One of the savages had 
marked his elevation, and barbarously shot him. I hastened over 
into the yard, and walking up to him, told him that was bad, very 
bad ' That this poor bird had come fi'om a far distant country to 
sing to him, and that in return he had cruelly killed him. I told 
him the Great Spirit was offended at such cruelty, and that he 
would lose many a deer for doing so. The old Indian, father-in- 
law to the bird-killer, understanding by the negro interpreter what 
I said, replied, that when these birds come singing and making a 
noise all day near the house, somebody xvill surely which is ex- 
actly what an old superstitious German near Hampton in Virginia 
once told me. This fellow had married the two eldest daughters 
of the old Indian, and presented one of them with the bird he had 
killed. The next day I passed through the Chickasaw Big-town, 
which stands on the high open plain that extends through their 
country, three or four miles in breadth, by fifteen in length. Here 
and there you perceive little groups of miserable huts, formed of 
saplings, and plastered with mud and clay ; about these are gene- 
rally a few peach and plumb trees. Many ruins of others stand 
scattered about, and I question whether there were twenty inhabit- 
ed huts within the whole range of view. The ground was red with 
strawberries; and the boatmen were seen in straggling parties feast- 
ing on them. Now and then a solitary Indian, wrapt in his blan- 
ket, passed sullen and silent. On this plain are beds of shells, of a 
large species of clam, some of which are almost entire. I this day 
stopt at the house of a white man, who had two Indian wives, and 
a hopeful string of young savages, all in their fig-leaves; not one 
