Pale Brother—"White man love Cheyenne. Got lots of food, but no whisky" (the latter a lie which almost choked the speaker).
It would not interest the reader to know all the repetitions or nonsense uttered, and we spare him the infliction of even attempting to tell him. The Indians had for their object food, and they got it. The whites had for their object permanent peace, and did not get it.
WHITE WOLF AT HOME.
"The red man is noble, big injun is me."
In due time the council broke up, and in an incredibly short time thereafter many of the Indians were reeling drunk. That White Wolf did not become equally so was owing altogether to his being a man of iron constitution. Any thing but metal, it seemed to me, must have been burnt out by the fiery draughts which we saw the noble chief take down. A tin cupful of "whisk," such as would have made the cork in a bottle tight, was tossed off without a wink.
Sachem, who took notes, rendered White Wolf's speech at the council in verse, as follows:
White brother, have pity; the White Wolf is poor,
The skin of his belly is shrunk to his back;
A gallon of whisky is good for a cure,
If followed by plenty of "bacon and tack."
The red man is noble, big Injun is me:
Like berries all crimson and ready to pick,
The scalps on my pole are a heap good to see—
Good medicine they when poor Injun is sick.
The red man is truth, and the white one is lies;
The first suffers wrong at hand of the other;
The way they skin us is good for sore eyes,
The way we skin them astonishing, rather.
They rob us of guns and offer us plows,
And tell us to farm it, to go into corn;
We're good to raise hair, and good to raise rows,
And good to raise essence of corn—in a horn.
Go back to your cities and leave us our home,
Or off with your scalp and that remnant of shirt;
Go, let the poor Injun in happiness roam,
And live on his buffalo, puppies, and dirt.
Two or three of the Indians mounted their ponies and took a race through the streets. The animals were thin, despondent brutes, but as wiry as if their hides were stuffed, like patent mattresses, full of springs. The Indians, as is their universal custom, mounted from the right side, instead of the left as we do. At the lower end of the street they got as nearly in line as their inebriated condition would permit, and when the word was given set off toward us with frightful shouts, which made the ponies scamper like so many frightened cats.
The animal which came out ahead had no rider to claim the honors, that blanketed jockey having fallen off midway. He was now sitting on his hams, looking the wrong way down the track, and evidently adding up the "book" which he had made for the race. As he soon arose, with a dissatisfied grunt, we thought his figures probably read about as follows: