“D’ye call yourselves chiefs and warriors?” he began, upon a pretty high key.  “I call ye squaws!  There is not a man among ye.  Dogs would be the best name.  You are poor Injins.  A long time ago, the pale-faces came here in two or three little canoes.  They were but a handful, and you were plentier than prairie wolves.  Your bark could be heard throughout the land.  Well, what did this handful of pale-faces?  It drove your fathers before them, until they got all the best of the hunting-grounds.  Not an Injin of you all, now, ever get down on the shores of the great salt lake, unless to sell brooms and baskets, and then he goes sneaking like a wolf after a sheep.  You have forgotten how clams and oysters taste.  Your fathers had as many of them as they could eat; but not one of you ever tasted them.  The pale-faces eat them all.  If an Injin asked for one, they would throw the shell at his head, and call him a dog.

“Do you think that my chiefs would hang one of you between two such miserable saplings as these?  No!  They would scorn to practice such pitiful torture.  They would bring the tops of two tall pines together, trees a hundred and fifty feet high, and put their prisoner on the topmost boughs, for the crows and ravens to pick his eyes out.  But you are miserable Injins!  You know nothing.  If you know’d any better, would you act such poor torment ag’in’ a great brave?  I spit upon ye, and call you squaws.  The pale-faces have made women of ye.  They have taken out your hearts, and put pieces of dog’s flesh in their places.”

Here the corporal, who delivered himself with an animation suited to his language, was obliged to pause, literally for want of breath.  Singular as it may seem, this tirade excited great admiration among the savages.  It is true, that very few understood what was said; perhaps no one understood all, but the manner was thought to be admirable.  When some of the language was interpreted, a deep but smothered resentment was felt; more especially at the taunts touching the manner in which the whites had overcome the red men.  Truth is hard to be borne, and the individual, or people, who will treat a thousand injurious lies with contempt, feel all their ire aroused at one reproach that has its foundation in fact.  Nevertheless, the anger that the corporal’s words did, in truth, awaken, was successfully repressed, and he had the disappointment of seeing that his life was spared for the torture.

“Brother,” said Bough of the Oak, again placing himself before the captive, “you have a stout heart.  It is made of stone, and not of flesh.  If our hearts be of dog’s meat, yours is of stone.  What you say is true.  The pale-faces did come at first in two or three canoes, and there were but few of them.  We are ashamed, for it is true, A few pale-faces drove toward the setting sun many Injins.  But we cannot be driven any further.  We mean to stop here, and begin to take all the scalps we can.  A great chief, who belongs