may quite easily be broken. He must gain the confidence of his uncertain subjects, or retain them by fear. A great many families in the village are better off than the chief; dress better, are richer in arms, horses and other possessions. Like the ancient German chiefs, he gains the confidence and attachment of his soldiers, first by his bravery, more frequently by presents, which only serve to impoverish him the more. If a chief does not succeed in gaining the love of his subjects, they will despise his authority and quit him at the slightest opposition on his part; for the customs of the Indians admit no conditions by which they may enforce respect from their subjects.
It rarely happens, among the Western tribes, that a chief attains great power, unless he is at the head of a numerous family. I have sometimes seen whole villages composed of the descendants and relatives of the chief. This kind of nomadic community has a certain patriarchal character, and is generally the best regulated and the most pacific. The chief is less a master than a father, who reigns in a numerous household by the wish to do all in his power to render all happy. It may be said in general of the Indian nations, that tribes little united with each other, rent even by discord and jealousy, can possess little power and exercise it less.
Let us return to Tchatka, the grand chief-elect of the principal band of the Assiniboins. He found himself in command of 400 warriors. They marched the rest of the night and during the whole of the next day, with the greatest precautions and in the best order, so as to prevent any surprise. Some scouts alone ran over and beat the surrounding country, leaving in their passage signals and rods planted in the earth, and inclined in such a manner as to indicate the route that the little army ought to follow. About evening they descried a thick wood on the border of a little stream, and there erected, hastily, a kind of parapet, or defense, with the dried branches and trunks of trees, and thus passed behind
it a peaceful night. In the morning theyifound themselves in the midst of an innumerable herd of bisons, and stopped