on his breast. Having shaken us by the hand with a cordial grunt of
salutation, the old man, dropping his red blanket from his shoulders,
sat down cross-legged on the ground. In the absence of liquor we offered
him a cup of sweetened water, at which he ejaculated "Good!" and was
beginning to tell us how great a man he was, and how many Pawnees he
had killed, when suddenly a motley concourse appeared wading across the
creek toward us. They filed past in rapid succession, men, women, and
children; some were on horseback, some on foot, but all were alike
squalid and wretched. Old squaws, mounted astride of shaggy, meager
little ponies, with perhaps one or two snake-eyed children seated behind
them, clinging to their tattered blankets; tall lank young men on foot,
with bows and arrows in their hands; and girls whose native ugliness not
all the charms of glass beads and scarlet cloth could disguise, made up
the procession; although here and there was a man who, like our visitor,
seemed to hold some rank in this respectable community. They were the
dregs of the Kansas nation, who, while their betters were gone to hunt
buffalo, had left the village on a begging expedition to Westport.

When this ragamuffin horde had passed, we caught our horses, saddled,
harnessed, and resumed our journey. Fording the creek, the low roofs of
a number of rude buildings appeared, rising from a cluster of groves and
woods on the left; and riding up through a long lane, amid a profusion
of wild roses and early spring flowers, we found the log-church and
school-houses belonging to the Methodist Shawanoe Mission. The Indians
were on the point of gathering to a religious meeting. Some scores of
them, tall men in half-civilized dress, were seated on wooden benches
under the trees; while their horses were tied to the sheds and fences.
Their chief, Parks, a remarkably large and athletic man, was just
arrived from Westport, where he owns a trading establishment. Beside
this, he has a fine farm and a considerable number of slaves. Indeed the