heart.  He was a Dakota from the Missouri, a reputed son of the half-breed interpreter, Pierre Dorion, so often mentioned in Irving’s “Astoria.”  He said that he was going to Richard’s trading house to sell his horse to some emigrants who were encamped there, and asked me to go with him.  We forded the stream together, Paul dragging his wild charge behind him.  As we passed over the sandy plains beyond, he grew quite communicative.  Paul was a cosmopolitan in his way; he had been to the settlements of the whites, and visited in peace and war most of the tribes within the range of a thousand miles.  He spoke a jargon of French and another of English, yet nevertheless he was a thorough Indian; and as he told of the bloody deeds of his own people against their enemies, his little eye would glitter with a fierce luster.  He told how the Dakota exterminated a village of the Hohays on the Upper Missouri, slaughtering men, women, and children; and how an overwhelming force of them cut off sixteen of the brave Delawares, who fought like wolves to the last, amid the throng of their enemies.  He told me also another story, which I did not believe until I had it confirmed from so many independent sources that no room was left for doubt.  I am tempted to introduce it here.

Six years ago a fellow named Jim Beckwith, a mongrel of French, American, and negro blood, was trading for the Fur Company, in a very large village of the Crows.  Jim Beckwith was last summer at St. Louis.  He is a ruffian of the first stamp; bloody and treacherous, without honor or honesty; such at least is the character he bears upon the prairie.  Yet in his case all the standard rules of character fail, for though he will stab a man in his sleep, he will also perform most desperate acts of daring; such, for instance, as the following:  While he was in the Crow village, a Blackfoot war party, between thirty and forty in number came stealing through the country, killing stragglers and carrying off horses.  The Crow warriors got upon their trail and pressed them so closely that they could not escape, at which the Blackfeet, throwing up a semicircular breastwork of logs at the foot of a precipice, coolly awaited their approach.  The logs and sticks, piled four or five high, protected them in front.  The Crows might have swept over the breastwork and exterminated their enemies; but though out-numbering them tenfold, they did not dream of storming the little fortification.  Such a proceeding would be altogether repugnant to their notions of warfare.  Whooping and yelling, and jumping from side to side like devils incarnate, they showered bullets and arrows upon the logs; not a Blackfoot was hurt, but several Crows, in spite of their leaping and dodging, were shot down.  In this childish manner the fight went on for an hour or two.  Now and then a Crow warrior in an ecstasy of valor and vainglory would scream forth his war song, boasting himself the bravest and greatest of mankind, and grasping his hatchet, would rush up and strike it upon the breastwork, and then as he retreated to his companions, fall dead under a shower of arrows; yet no combined attack seemed to be dreamed of.  The Blackfeet remained secure in their intrenchment.  At last Jim Beckwith lost patience.