This an historical fact.  The steamboat “Beaver” made its first exploration upon the Red River, some eighty miles above the French settlement of Nachitochy, just at the very time that the Comanches were attacking the last Caddoe village upon the banks of the Red River.  These poor savages yelled with terror when the strange mass passed thus before them, and, either from wanton cruelty or from fear of an attack, the boat fired four guns, loaded with grape-shot, upon the village, from which they were not a hundred yards distant.

The following is a narrative of events which happened in the time of Mosh Kohta (buffalo), a great chief, hundreds of years ago, when the unfortunate “La Salle” was shipwrecked upon the coast of Texas, while endeavouring to discover the mouth of the Mississippi.  Such records are very numerous among the great prairie tribes; they bear sometimes the Ossianic type, and are related every evening during the month of February, when the “Divines” and the elders of the nation teach to the young men the traditions of former days.

“It was in the time of a chief, a great chief, strong, cunning, and wise, a chief of many bold deeds.  His name was Mosh Kohta.

“It is a long while!  No Pale-faces dwelt in the land of plenty (the translation of the Indian word ’Texas’); our grandfathers had just received it from the Great Spirit, and they had come from the setting of the sun across the big mountains to take possession.  We were a great nation—­we are so now, we have always been so, and we will ever be.  At that time, also, our tribe spread all along the western shores of the great stream Mississippi, for no Pale-face had yet settled upon it.  We were a great people, ruled by a mighty chief; the earth, the trees, the rivers, and the air know his name.  Is there a place in the mountains or the prairies where the name of Mosh Kohta has not been pronounced and praised?

“At that time a strange warlike people of the Pale-Faces broke their big canoes along our coasts of the South, and they all landed on the shore, well armed with big guns and long rifles, but they had nothing to eat.  These were the ‘Mahamate-kosh-ehoj’ (the French); their chief was a good man, a warrior, and a great traveller; he had started from the northern territories of the Algonquins, to go across the salt water in far distant lands, and bring back with him many good things which the Red-skins wanted:—­warm blankets to sleep upon, flints to strike a fire, axes to cut the trees, and knives to skin the bear and the buffalo.  He was a good man, and loved the Indians, for they also were good, and good people will always love each other.