Brian. He would hardly know how to walk in a colonel’s uniform.
Hunter. “In a pair of white kid gloves; tight blue coat, with gilt buttons, gold epaulettes, and red sash; cloth trowsers with straps; high-heeled boots; cocked hat, and scarlet feather; with a cigar in his mouth, a green umbrella in one hand, and a yellow fan in the other; and with the neck of a whiskey bottle protruding out of each of the two tail-pockets of his regimental coat; this ‘monkey that had seen the world’ suddenly appeared before the chiefs and warriors of his tribe; and as he stood before them, straight as a ramrod, in a high state of perspiration, caused by the tightness of his finery, while the cool fresh air of heaven blew over the naked, unrestrained limbs of the spectators, it might, perhaps not unjustly, be said of the costumes, ‘Which is the savage?’ In return for the presents he had received, and with a desire to impart as much real information as possible to his tribe, the poor jaded traveller undertook to deliver to them a course of lectures, in which he graphically described all that he had witnessed.”
Austin. An Indian in white kid gloves, blue coat, high-heeled boots, and cocked hat and feather! Why his tribe would all laugh at him, in spite of his lectures.
Hunter. “For a while he was listened to with attention; but as soon as the minds of his audience had received as much as they could hold, they began to disbelieve him. Nothing daunted, however, the traveller still proceeded.”
Austin. I thought they would laugh at him.
Hunter. “He told them about wigwams, in which a thousand people could at one time pray to the Great Spirit; of other wigwams, five stories high, built in lines, facing each other, and extending over an enormous space: he told them of war canoes that would hold twelve hundred warriors.”
Austin. They would be sure never to believe him.
Hunter. “Such tales, to the Indian mind, seemed an insult to common sense. For some time he was treated merely with ridicule and contempt; but, when, resolutely continuing to recount his adventures, he told them about a balloon, and that he had seen white people, who, by attaching a great ball to a canoe, as he described it, could rise in it up to the clouds, and travel through the heavens, the medicine, or mystery men of his tribe pronounced him to be an impostor; and the multitude vociferously declaring that he was too great a liar to live, a young warrior, in a paroxysm of anger, levelled a rifle and shot him dead!”
Austin. Well, I am very sorry! It was very silly to be dressed up in that way; but they ought not to have killed him, for he told them the truth, after all.
Brian. I could never have thought that an Indian chief would have dressed himself in a blue coat and gilt buttons.