try to wash out the color.  Were the color washed out of my face, I should be a pale-face!  There would not be paint enough to hide my shame.  No; I was born red, and will die a red man.  It is not good to have two faces.  An Injin is not a snake, to cast his skin.  The skin in which he was born he keeps.  He plays in it when a child; he goes in it to his first hunt; the bears and the deer know him by it; he carries it with him on the warpath, and his enemies tremble at the sight of it; his squaw knows him by that skin when he comes back to his wigwam; and when he dies, he is put aside in the same skin in—­which he was born.  There is but one skin, and it has but one color.  At first, it is little.  The pappoose that wears it is little.  There is not need of a large skin.  But it grows with the pappoose, and the biggest warrior finds his skin around him.  This is because the Great Spirit fitted it to him.  Whatever the Manitou does is good.

“My brothers have squaws—­they have pappooses.  When the pappoose is put into their arms, do they get the paint-stones, and paint it red?  They do not.  It is not necessary.  The Manitou painted it red before it was born.  How this was done I do not know.  I am nothing but a poor Injin, and only know what I see.  I have seen that the pappooses are red when they are born, and that the warriors are red when they die.  They are also red while living.  It is enough.  Their fathers could never have been pale-faces, or we should find some white spots on their children.  There are none.

“Crowsfeather has spoken of the Jews as lost.  I am not surprised to hear it.  It seems to me that all pale-faces get lost.  They wander from their own hunting-grounds into those of other people.  It is not so with Injins.  The Pottawattamie does not kill the deer of the Iowa, nor the Ottawa the deer of the Menomenees.  Each tribe knows its own game.  This is because they are not lost.  My pale-face father appears to wish us well.  He has come on a long and weary path to tell us about his Manitou.  For this I thank him.  I thank all who wish to do me good.  Them that wish to do me harm I strike from behind.  It is our Injin custom.  I do not wish to hurt the medicine-priest, because I think he wishes to do me good, and not to do me harm.  He has a strange law.  It is to do good to them that do harm to you.  It is not the law of the red men.  It is not good law.  I do not wonder that the tribes which follow such a law get lost.  They cannot tell their friends from their enemies.  They can have no people to scalp.  What is a warrior if he cannot find someone to scalp?  No; such a law would make women of the bravest braves in the Openings, or on the prairie.  It may be a good law for Jews, who get lost; but it is a bad law for Injins, who know the paths they travel.  Let another speak.”