The Comanches, like all the tribes of the Shoshone breed, are generous and liberal to excess.  You can take what you please from the wigwam—­horses, skins, rich furs, gold, anything, in fact, except their arms and their females, whom they love fondly.  Yet they are not jealous; they are too conscious of their own superiority to fear anything, and besides, they respect too much the weaker sex to harbour any injurious suspicion.

It is a very remarkable fact, that all the tribes who claim any affinity with the Shoshones, the Apaches, the Comanches, and the Pawnies Loups, have always rejected with scorn any kind of spirits when offered to them by the traders.  They say that “Shoba-wapo” (the fire-water) is the greatest enemy of the Indian race, and that the Yankees, too cowardly to fight the Indians as men, have invented this terrible poison to destroy them without danger.

“We hated once the Spaniards and the Watchinangoes (Mexicans),” they say, “but they were honourable men compared with the thieves of Texas.  The few among the Spanish race who would fight, did so as warriors; and they had laws among them which punished with death those who would give or sell this poison to the Indians.”

The consequence of this abstinence from spirits is, that these Western nations improve and increase rapidly; while, on the contrary, the Eastern tribes, in close contact with the Yankees, gradually disappear.  The Sioux, the Osage, the Winnebego, and other Eastern tribes, are very cruel in disposition; they show no mercy, and consider every means fair, however treacherous, to conquer an enemy.  Not so with the Indians to the west of the Rocky Mountains.  They have a spirit of chivalry, which prevents them taking any injurious advantage.

As I have before observed, an Indian will never fire his rifle upon an enemy who is armed only with his lance, bow, and arrows; or if he does, and kills him, he will not take his scalp, as it would constantly recall to his mind that he had killed a defenceless foe.  Private encounters with their enemies, the Navahoes and Arrapahoes, are conducted as tournaments in the days of yore.  Two Indians will run full speed against each other with their well-poised lance; on their shield, with equal skill, they will receive the blow; then, turning round, they will salute each other as a mark of esteem from one brave foe to another.

Such incidents happen daily, but they will not be believed by the Europeans, who have the vanity of considering themselves alone as possessing “le sentiment du chevalresque et du beau;” besides, they are accustomed to read so many horrible accounts of massacres committed by the savages, that the idea of a red skin is always associated in their mind with the picture of burning stakes and slow torture.  It is a mistake, and a sad one; would to God that our highly civilized nations of Europe had to answer for no more cruelties than those perpetrated by the numerous gallant tribes of Western America.