excite their respectful awe as much as the less harmful frenzy of one
of their own medicine-men; they were NOT influenced by implacable white
gods, who relaxed only to drive hard bargains and exchange mildewed
flour and shoddy blankets for their fish and furs. I am afraid they
regarded these raids of Christian civilization as they looked upon
grasshopper plagues, famines, inundations, and epidemics; while an
utterly impassive God washed his hands of the means he had employed, and
even encouraged the faithful to resist and overcome his emissaries--the
white devils! Had Elijah Martin been a student of theology, he
would have been struck with the singular resemblance of these
theories--although the application thereof was reversed--to the
Christian faith. But Elijah Martin had neither the imagination of
a theologian nor the insight of a politician. He only saw that he,
hitherto ignored and despised in a community of half-barbaric men,
now translated to a community of men wholly savage, was respected and
worshipped!

It might have turned a stronger head than Elijah's. He was at first
frightened, fearful lest his reception concealed some hidden irony,
or that, like the flower-crowned victim of ancient sacrifice, he was
exalted and sustained to give importance and majesty to some impending
martyrdom. Then he began to dread that his innocent deceit--if deceit it
was--should be discovered; at last, partly from meekness and partly from
the animal contentment of present security, he accepted the situation.
Fortunately for him it was purely passive. The Great Chief of the Minyo
tribe was simply an expressionless idol of flesh and blood. The previous
incumbent of that office had been an old man, impotent and senseless
of late years through age and disease. The chieftains and braves had
consulted in council before him, and perfunctorily submitted their
decisions, like offerings, to his unresponsive shrine. In the same way,