Many seasons ago, there lived within the limits of the great council-fire of the Mahas, a chief who was renowned for his valour and victories in the field, his wisdom in the council, his dexterity and success in the chase. His name was Mahtoree, or the White Crane. He was celebrated throughout the vast regions of the west, from the Mississippi to the Hills of the Serpent[A], from the Missouri to the Plains of Bitter Frost, for all those qualities which render an Indian warrior famous and feared. He was the terror of his enemies, whom in the conflict he never spared; the delight as well as refuge of his friends, whom he never deserted. Yet, brave as he was, and fierce and reckless when met in the strife of warriors, never did his valour, or his fierceness, or his recklessness of danger, betray him into those excesses of wrath and cruelty, which, after great victories purchased by much blood and loss of dear and valued friends, will often be seen in the camp of the red man of the forest. Never by his counsels was the captive tortured--never by his command were weak and defenceless women and children delivered over to slaughter. He had frequently been known, at the voice of pity crying at the door of the heart, and at the suggestions of a great and proud mind, to cut the bonds which bound the victim to the stake, thereby exposing himself to the wrath and anger of his stern warriors, and to rage which, but for the unequalled valour and daring boldness and wisdom of his career, both as a warrior and a man, would have been attended with death to himself, and the entailment of infamy upon his name. It has already been told our brother, that none but a noted and approved warrior dare take upon himself the liberation of a prisoner, devoted by the spirit of Indian warfare to tortures and death.
[Footnote A: Hills of the Serpent, the Rocky Mountains. I have before mentioned the Indian superstition that thunder is the hissing of a great serpent, which has his residence among those mountains.]
In one of the war expeditions of the Pawnee Mahas against the Burntwood Tetons, it was the good fortune of the former to overcome, and to take many prisoners--men, women, and children. One of the captives, Sakeajah, or the Bird-Girl, a beautiful creature in the morning of life, after being adopted into one of the Mahas families, became the favourite wife of the chief warrior of the nation. Great was the love and affection which the White Crane bore his beautiful wife, and it grew yet stronger in his soul, when she had brought him four sons--a gift the more highly prized by the wise and sagacious chief, because, as my brother can see, for he is not a fool, it was the pledge of continued power and importance in the tribe, when his own strength and vigour should have passed away, when the hand of age should no more find joy in bending the bow, and the trembling knee be best pleased to rest upon soft skins by the warm fire of the cabin. Among the children of the forest he is most valued who has provided most plentifully the means to maintain the honour, and secure the safety, of his people; and hence he who can reckon the most brave and warlike sons is esteemed the greatest of benefactors. Among all the red men of the land, that wife acquires the strongest hold on the affections of her husband who has given him the largest family, as that husband acquires the greatest consequence in the eyes of his nation, who sees the most birds in his nest, and is able to carry most vultures to prey upon the corpses of his enemies. Is the barren woman beloved by her husband? Ask me if the male bird watches by the nest of her who sits on addled eggs. I shall tell you "No," nor does the husband love or value the wife who lives alone in his cabin with none to call her mother.