Meeting Arapahoes here on the Arkansas was a very different thing from meeting the same Indians among their native mountains.  There was another circumstance in our favor.  General Kearny had seen them a few weeks before, as he came up the river with his army, and renewing his threats of the previous year, he told them that if they ever again touched the hair of a white man’s head he would exterminate their nation.  This placed them for the time in an admirable frame of mind, and the effect of his menaces had not yet disappeared.  I was anxious to see the village and its inhabitants.  We thought it also our best policy to visit them openly, as if unsuspicious of any hostile design; and Shaw and I, with Henry Chatillon, prepared to cross the river.  The rest of the party meanwhile moved forward as fast as they could, in order to get as far as possible from our suspicious neighbors before night came on.

The Arkansas at this point, and for several hundred miles below, is nothing but a broad sand-bed, over which a few scanty threads of water are swiftly gliding, now and then expanding into wide shallows.  At several places, during the autumn, the water sinks into the sand and disappears altogether.  At this season, were it not for the numerous quicksands, the river might be forded almost anywhere without difficulty, though its channel is often a quarter of a mile wide.  Our horses jumped down the bank, and wading through the water, or galloping freely over the hard sand-beds, soon reached the other side.  Here, as we were pushing through the tall grass, we saw several Indians not far off; one of them waited until we came up, and stood for some moments in perfect silence before us, looking at us askance with his little snakelike eyes.  Henry explained by signs what we wanted, and the Indian, gathering his buffalo robe about his shoulders, led the way toward the village without speaking a word.

The language of the Arapahoes is so difficult, and its pronunciations so harsh and guttural, that no white man, it is said, has ever been able to master it.  Even Maxwell the trader, who has been most among them, is compelled to resort to the curious sign language common to most of the prairie tribes.  With this Henry Chatillon was perfectly acquainted.

Approaching the village, we found the ground all around it strewn with great piles of waste buffalo meat in incredible quantities.  The lodges were pitched in a very wide circle.  They resembled those of the Dakota in everything but cleanliness and neatness.  Passing between two of them, we entered the great circular area of the camp, and instantly hundreds of Indians, men, women and children, came flocking out of their habitations to look at us; at the same time, the dogs all around the village set up a fearful baying.  Our Indian guide walked toward the lodge of the chief.  Here we dismounted; and loosening the trail-ropes from our horses’ necks, held them securely, and sat down before the entrance, with