"Well, at that time, we were once in the spring hunting the buffalo. The Caddoes, who are now a small tribe of starved dogs, were then a large powerful nation, extending from the Cross Timbers to the waters of the great stream, in the East, but they were gamblers and drunkards; they would sell all their furs for the; 'Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and return to their villages to poison their squaws, and make brutes of their children. Soon they got nothing more to sell; and as they could not now do without the 'Shoba-wapo,' they began to steal. They would steal the horses and oxen of the Pale-faces, and say 'The Comanches did it.' When they killed trappers or travellers, they would go to the fort of the Yankees and say to them, 'Go to the wigwams of the Comanches, and you will see the scalps of your friends hanging upon long poles.' But we did not care for we knew it was not true.
"A long time passed away, when the evil spirit of the Cad does whispered to them to come to the villages of the Comanches while they were hunting, and to take away with them all that they could. They did so, entering the war-path as foxes and owls, during night. When they arrived, they found nothing but squaws, old women, and little children. Yet these fought well, and many of the Caddoes were killed before they abandoned their lodges. They soon found us out in the hunting-ground; and our great chief ordered me to start with five hundred warriors, and never return until the Caddoes should have no home, and wander like deer and starved wolves in the open prairie.
"I followed the track. First, I burnt their great villages in the Cross Timbers, and then pursued them in the swamps and cane-brakes of the East, where they concealed themselves among the long lizards of the water (the alligators). We, however, came up with them again, and they crossed the Sabine, to take shelter among the Yankees, where they had another village, which was their largest and their richest. We followed, and on the very shores of their river, although a thousand miles from our own country, and where the waters are dyed with the red clay of the soil, we encamped round their wigwams and prepared to conquer.
"It was at the gloomy season, when it rains night and day; the river was high, the earth damp, and our young braves shivering, even under their blankets. It was evening, when, far to the south, above one of the windings of the stream, I saw a thick black smoke rising as a tall pine among the clouds, and I watched it closely. It came towards us; and as the sky darkened and night came on, sparks of fire showed the progress of the strange sight. Soon noises were heard, like those of the mountains when the evil spirits are shaking them; the sounds were awful, solemn, and regular, like the throbs of a warrior's heart; and now and then a sharp, shrill scream would rend the air and awake other terrible voices in the forest.
"It came, and deer, bears, panthers were passing among us, madly flying before the dreaded unknown. It came, it flew, nearer and nearer, till we saw it plainly with its two big mouths, spitting fire like the burning mountains of the West. It rained very hard, and yet we saw all. It was like a long fish, shaped like a canoe, and its sides had many eyes, full of bright light as the stars above.
"I saw no one with the monster; he was alone, breaking the waters and splashing them with his arms, his legs, or his fins. On the top, and it was very high, there was a square lodge. Once I thought I could see a man in it, but it was a fancy; or perhaps the soul of the thing, watching from its hiding-place for a prey which it might seize upon. Happily it was dark, very dark, and being in a hollow along the banks, we could not be perceived; and the dreadful thing passed.
"The Caddoes uttered a loud scream of fear and agony, their hearts were melted. We said nothing, for we were Comanches and warriors; and yet I felt strange, and was fixed to where I stood. A man is but a man, and even a Red-skin cannot struggle with a spirit. The scream of the Caddoes, however, frightened the monster; its flanks opened and discharged some tremendous Anim Tekis (thunders) on the village. I heard the crashing of the logs, the splitting of the hides covering the lodges, and when the smoke was all gone, it left a smell of powder; the monster was far, far off and there was no trace of it left, except the moans of the wounded and the lamentation of the squaws among the Caddoes.
"I and my young men soon recovered our senses; we entered the village, burnt everything, and killed the warriors. They would not fight; but as they were thieves, we destroyed them. We returned to our own villages, every one of us with many scalps, and since that time the Caddoes have never been a nation; they wander from north to south, and from east to west; they have huts made with the bark of trees, or they take shelter in the burrows of the prairie dogs, with the owls and the snakes; but they have no lodges, no wigwams, no villages. Thus may it be with all the foes of our great nation."
This an historical fact. The steamboat "Beaver" made its first exploration upon the Red River, some eighty miles above the French settlement of Nachitochy, just at the very time that the Comanches were attacking the last Caddoe village upon the banks of the Red River. These poor savages yelled with terror when the strange mass passed thus before them, and, either from wanton cruelty or from fear of an attack, the boat fired four guns, loaded with grape-shot, upon the village, from which they were not a hundred yards distant.
The following is a narrative of events which happened in the time of Mosh Kohta (buffalo), a great chief, hundreds of years ago, when the unfortunate "La Salle" was shipwrecked upon the coast of Texas, while endeavouring to discover the mouth of the Mississippi. Such records are very numerous among the great prairie tribes; they bear sometimes the Ossianic type, and are related every evening during the month of February, when the "Divines" and the elders of the nation teach to the young men the traditions of former days.