“Who’s your chief?” he immediately inquired.

Henry Chatillon pointed to us.  The old Delaware fixed his eyes intently upon us for a moment, and then sententiously remarked: 

“No good!  Too young!” With this flattering comment he left us, and rode after his people.

This tribe, the Delawares, once the peaceful allies of William Penn, the tributaries of the conquering Iroquois, are now the most adventurous and dreaded warriors upon the prairies.  They make war upon remote tribes the very names of which were unknown to their fathers in their ancient seats in Pennsylvania; and they push these new quarrels with true Indian rancor, sending out their little war parties as far as the Rocky Mountains, and into the Mexican territories.  Their neighbors and former confederates, the Shawanoes, who are tolerable farmers, are in a prosperous condition; but the Delawares dwindle every year, from the number of men lost in their warlike expeditions.

Soon after leaving this party, we saw, stretching on the right, the forests that follow the course of the Missouri, and the deep woody channel through which at this point it runs.  At a distance in front were the white barracks of Fort Leavenworth, just visible through the trees upon an eminence above a bend of the river.  A wide green meadow, as level as a lake, lay between us and the Missouri, and upon this, close to a line of trees that bordered a little brook, stood the tent of the captain and his companions, with their horses feeding around it, but they themselves were invisible.  Wright, their muleteer, was there, seated on the tongue of the wagon, repairing his harness.  Boisverd stood cleaning his rifle at the door of the tent, and Sorel lounged idly about.  On closer examination, however, we discovered the captain’s brother, Jack, sitting in the tent, at his old occupation of splicing trail-ropes.  He welcomed us in his broad Irish brogue, and said that his brother was fishing in the river, and R. gone to the garrison.  They returned before sunset.  Meanwhile we erected our own tent not far off, and after supper a council was held, in which it was resolved to remain one day at Fort Leavenworth, and on the next to bid a final adieu to the frontier:  or in the phraseology of the region, to “jump off.”  Our deliberations were conducted by the ruddy light from a distant swell of the prairie, where the long dry grass of last summer was on fire.

CHAPTER III

FORT LEAVENWORTH

On the next morning we rode to Fort Leavenworth.  Colonel, now General, Kearny, to whom I had had the honor of an introduction when at St. Louis, was just arrived, and received us at his headquarters with the high-bred courtesy habitual to him.  Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort, being without defensive works, except two block-houses.  No rumors of war had as yet disturbed its tranquillity.  In the square grassy area, surrounded by barracks and the quarters of the officers, the men were passing and repassing, or lounging among the trees; although not many weeks afterward it presented a different scene; for here the very off-scourings of the frontier were congregated, to be marshaled for the expedition against Santa Fe.