hunting-ground, they were obliged to return back to defend their squaws
and to punish their enemies.

"Now, why should not the Shoshones put themselves at once above the
reach of such chances? why should they not get rich? They object to
planting grain and tobacco. They do well, as other people can do that
for them; but there are many other means of getting strength and wealth.
These I will teach to my tribe!

"The Shoshones fight the Crows, because the Crows are thieves; the
Flat-heads, because they are greedy of our buffaloes; the Umbiquas,
because they steal horses. Were it not for them, the children of the
Grand Serpent would never fight; their lodges would fill with wealth,
and that wealth would purchase all the good things of the white men from
distant lands. These white men-come to the Watchinangoes (Mexicans), to
take the hides of their oxen, the wool of their sheep. They would come
to us, if we had anything to offer them. Let us then call them, for we
have the hides of thousands of buffaloes; we have the furs of the beaver
and the otter; we have plenty of copper in our mountains, and of gold in
our streams.

"Now, hear me. When a Shoshone chief thinks that the Crows will attack
his lodge, he calls his children and his nephews around him. A nation
can do the same. The Shoshones have many brave children in the prairies
of the South; they have many more on the borders of the Yankees. All of
them think and speak like their ancestors, they are the same people.
Now would it not be good and wise to have all these brave grand-children
and grand-nephews as your neighbours and allies, instead of the Crows,
the Cayuses, and the Umbiquas? Yes, it would. Who would dare to come
from the north across a country inhabited by the warlike Comanches, or