The tribe encamped, and got rid of what ponies, robes and meats it could
dispose of for guns and steel weapons, and "made whisky." The squaws
concealed the arms while the warriors raged, but the Chis-chis-chash in
that day were able to withstand the new vices of the white men better
than most people of the plains.

On one occasion, the Bat was standing with a few chiefs before the
gateway of the fort. M. Papin opened the passage and invited them to
enter. Proudly the tall tribesmen walked among the _engages_--seeming
to pay no heed, but the eye of an Indian misses nothing. The
surroundings were new and strange to the young man. The thick walls
seemed to his vagabond mind to be built to shield cowards. The white men
were created only to bring goods to the Indians. They were weak, but
their medicine was wonderful. It could make the knives and guns, which
God had denied to the Bat's people. They were to be tolerated; they were
few in number--he had not seen over a hundred of them in all his life.
Scattered here and there about the post were women, who consorted with
the _engages_--half-breeds from the Mandaus and Dela-wares, Sioux and
many other kinds of squaws; but the Chis-chis-chash had never sold a
woman to the traders. That was a pride with them.

The sisterhood of all the world will look at a handsome man and smile
pleasantly; so nothing but cheerful looks followed the Bat as he passed
the women who sat working by the doorways. They were not ill-favored,
these comforters of the French-Creole workmen, and were dressed in
bright calicos and red strouding, plentifully adorned with bright beads.
The boy was beginning to feel a subtle weakening in their presence. His
fierce barbarism softened, and he began to think of taking one. But he
put it aside as a weakness--this giving of ponies for these white men's