“My brother is a medicine-man of the pale-faces; his hairs are gray,” observed Crowsfeather.  “Some of your medicine-men are good, and some wicked.  It is so with the medicine-men of the red-skins.  Good and bad are to be found in all nations.  A medicine-man of your people cheated my young men by promising to show them where fire-water grows.  He did not show them.  He let them smell, but he did not let them drink.  That was a wicked medicine-man.  His scalp would not be safe did my young men see it again”—­here the bee-hunter, insensibly to himself, felt for his rifle, making sure that he had it between his legs; the corporal being a little surprised at the sudden start he gave.  “His hair does not grow on his head closer than the trees grow to the ground.  Even a tree can be cut down.  But all medicine-men are not alike.  My brother is a good medicine-man.  All he says may not be just as he thinks, but he believes what he says.  It is wonderful how men can look two ways; but it is more wonderful that they should go to the same place by paths that lead before and behind.  This we do not understand; my brother will tell us how it can be.”

“I believe I understand what it is that my children would know.  They think the earth is flat, but the pale-faces know that it is round.  He who travels and travels toward the setting sun would come to this very spot, if he travelled long enough.  The distance would be great, but the end of every straight path in this world is the place of starting.”

“My brother says this.  He says many curious things.  I have heard a medicine-man of his people say that the palefaces have seen their Great Spirit, talked with him, walked with him.  It is not so with us Indians.  Our Manitou speaks to us in thunder only.  We are ignorant, and wish to learn more than we now know.  Has my brother ever travelled on that path which ends where it begins?  Once, on the prairies, I lost my way.  There was snow, and glad was I to find tracks.  I followed the tracks.  But one traveller had passed.  After walking an hour, two had passed.  Another hour, and the three had passed, Then I saw the tracks were my own, and that I had been walking, as the squaws reason, round and round, but not going ahead.”

“I understand my friend, but he is wrong.  It is no matter which path the lost tribes travelled to get here.  The main question is, whether they came at all.  I see in the red men, in their customs, their history, their looks, and even in their traditions, proof that they are these Jews, once the favored people of the Great Spirit.”

“If the Manitou so well loves the Indians, why has he permitted the pale-faces to take away their hunting-grounds?  Why has he made the red man poor, and the white man rich?  Brother, I am afraid your tradition is a lying tradition, or these things would not be so.”

“It is not given to men to understand the wisdom that cometh from above.  That which seemeth so strange to us may be right.  The lost tribes had offended God; and their scattering, and captivity, and punishment, are but so many proofs of his displeasure.  But, if lost, we have reason to believe that one day they will be found.  Yes, my children, it will be the pleasure of the Great Spirit, one day, to restore you to the land of your fathers, and make you again, what you once were, a great and glorious people!”