"What are you?" asked the head chief.
"A man made of ashes," he answered.
"Who made you?"
"The Great Spirit. And now let me go, that I may take my bow and arrows, and kill my deer, and come back, and take the beautiful maiden to be my wife."
The chief said to Chenos, "Shall he have her? Does the Great Spirit give her to him?"
Chenos said, "Yes, for they love each other. The Great Spirit has willed that he shall have her, and from them shall arise a tribe to be called 'Piqua.'"
Brothers, I am a Piqua, descended from the "man made of ashes." If I have told you a lie, blame not me, for I have but told the story as I heard it. Brothers, I have done!
Though it could not be doubted that the Indians were delighted with the tale which had just been related to them, for they relish story-telling with as much zest as the Wild Arabs, they did not express their pleasure by any of those boisterous emotions of joy and satisfaction which, in civilized countries, and among men of a less taciturn disposition, are accorded to a good story well told. They neither shouted, nor clapped their hands, nor gave any other indication of pleasure. It is a strong as well as universal trait of the Indian that he is perfectly master of his feelings, never suffering them under any circumstances to escape from his controul and management. At the stake and the feast, in the field and the council, he alike subdues his mind, and utters but a gruff "Hah!" at scenes and tales which would make an Englishman very noisy and boisterous. That they liked the stories which had been told them, could be gathered from nothing that they said or did. It would have been accounted highly disgraceful to testify their approbation by exclamations. But their perfect silence and deep stillness spoke their satisfaction as plainly as the noisiest joy could have done. The attention of an Indian is more all-absorbing than that of a white man. It is never distracted or divided, he is never listless or absent. With dilated nostrils, and in a posture slightly inclined forward, he listens with his whole soul. Not a word escapes him. While an educated white man would be continually snapping the thread of the narrative by a reference in his mind to parallel passages in his former reading, the savage sees nothing but the present speaker, hears nothing but a tale fraught with incidents to which his own recollections are not permitted to offer a parallel. The next portion of the manuscript carries us to the Tale of Pomatare, or the Flying Beaver.