raiding band of the Tetons came suddenly upon them, making a prisoner of him while the others managed to make their escape.  He was instantly snatched up, tied on a horse, and hurried away.  The animal he rode was led by one of the band, and goaded on by another who followed immediately behind.  They travelled night and day until they reached a point entirely free from the possibility of being followed, and then he was leisurely conveyed to the main village at the Great Bend of the Missouri.  As their prisoner happened to be the son of a grand chief of the Pawnees, he was greatly prized as a captive, and, on that account, was placed in the family of a principal chief of the Tetons.  He was only sixteen years old according to his statement, but he was already fully five and a half feet high, and one of the handsomest and best proportioned Indians that Captain Williams had ever seen.

He said that his name was Do-ran-to, and that it is frequently the lot of Indian captives, to some extent, to occupy the relation of servants or slaves to their captors, and to be assigned to those menial and domestic offices which are never performed by men among the Indians, but constitute the employment of the women.  To be compelled to fill such a position in the village was very mortifying to the Indian pride of Do-ran-to, the heir to a chieftainship in his own tribe; but he became somewhat reconciled to it, as it threw him in the company of a beautiful daughter of the principal man in the village, whose name was Ni-ar-gua.

Do-ran-to was never permitted to go to war or to hunt the buffalo, a mode of life too tame and inactive for one of his restless spirit; but the compensation was in the frequent opportunities it gave him of walking and talking with the beautiful Ni-ar-gua, over whose heart he had soon gained a complete victory.

It would not do, however, for the daughter of a distinguished chief to be the wife of a captive slave, belonging, too, to a tribe toward which the Tetons entertained a hereditary hostility.  It would be a flagrant violation of every rule of Indian etiquette.  The mother of the youthful Ni-ar-gua, like her white match-making sisters, soon noticed the growing familiarity of the two lovers, and she like a good wife reported the matter to her husband, the chief.  The intelligence was entirely unexpected, and by no means very agreeable to his feeling of pride, so, after the savage method of disciplining refractory daughters, Ni-ar-gua was not only roughly reproved for her temerity, but received a good lodge-poling from her irate father, besides.  He also threatened to shoot an arrow through the heart of Do-ran-to for his impudent pretensions.  The result, however, of the attempt to break the match, as in similar cases in civilized life, was not only unsuccessful, but served to increase the flame it was intended to extinguish, and to strengthen instead of dissolve the attachment between the two.