Austin. That is the place I want to see.
Hunter. If you go there, you must take great care of yourself; for the Sioux will be at your heels. As I said, they hold the place sacred, and consider the approach of a white man a kind of profanation. The place is visited by all the neighbouring tribes for stone with which to make their pipes, whether they are at war or peace; for the Great Spirit, say they, always watches over it, and the war-club and scalping-knife are there harmless. There are hundreds of old inscriptions on the face of the rocks; and the wildest traditions are handed down, from father to son, respecting the place. Some of the Sioux say, that the Great Spirit once sent his runners abroad, to call together all the tribes that were at war, to the Red Pipe-stone Quarry. As he stood on the top of the rocks, he took out a piece of red stone, and made a large pipe; he smoked it over them, and told them, that, though at war, they must always be at peace at that place, for that it belonged to one as much as another, and that they must all make their pipes of the stone. Having thus spoken, a thick cloud of smoke from his great red pipe rolled over them, and in it he vanished away. Just at the moment that he took the last whiff of his great, long, red pipe, the rocks were wrapped in a blaze of fire, so that the surface of them was melted. Two squaws, then, in a flash of fire, sunk under the two medicine rocks, and no one can take away red stone from the place without their leave. Where the gospel is unknown, there is nothing too improbable to be received. The day will, no doubt, arrive, when the wild traditions of Red Pipe-stone Quarry will be done away, and the folly and wickedness of all such superstitions be plainly seen.
Here the hunter, having to attend his sheep, left the three brothers, to amuse themselves for half an hour with the curiosities in his cottage; after which, he returned to redeem his pledge, by relating the history he had promised them.
Indian Pipes.
CHAPTER VII.
“And now,” said the hunter, “for my account of Nikkanochee.[4] I met with him in Florida, his own country, when he was quite a child; indeed he is even now but a boy, being not more than twelve or thirteen years of age. The Seminole Indians, a mixed tribe, from whom prince Nikkanochee is descended, were a warlike people, settled on the banks of the River Chattahoochee. In a battle which took place between the Indians and a party of whites, under Major Dade, out of a hundred and fourteen white men, only two escaped the tomahawks of their opponents. A Seminole was about to despatch one of these two, when he suddenly called to mind that the soldier had once helped him in fitting a handle to his axe. This arrested his uplifted weapon, and the life of the soldier was spared.”
[4] This sketch is supposed to be a narrative of facts, though the authority for it is not within the publishers’ reach.
Austin. Noble! noble! If all the Seminoles were like him, they were a noble people.