lodges of your enemies? Is it in the open plain, or on the summit of an elevation? With a single glance of the eye we perceive all that is there, and is it there you pretend to discover them; and that, too, in a moment in which those who should protect their wives and children are afar? The bear and the jaguar hide their little ones in their dens, or in the depth of impenetrable forests; the wolf hides them in a hole; the goat and the deer cover them with hay. When you hunt the deer, do you not peep through the trees and the briars
In the fox and badger hunt, you seek their lairs. Let some one go and examine the little point of forest near the large rock, at the end of the plain in which we are."
Instantly, several of the most courageous and the most experienced in the stratagems of warfare were sent to the discovery. Favored by the night, and with all possible precautions, they entered the little wood, and made all their observations without being perceived. In the silence of midnight, they reported their news to Tchatka and his companions -" that they discovered the Blackfeet encampment in the place indicated by the chief; that the lodges were occupied solely by old men, women and children; that they could not hear the voices of any youth; and that all the horses were gone." This account filled these barbarous hearts with joy. The rest of the night was passed in songs and dances to the sound of the great drum, in juggleries and invocations to the manitous who had inspired Tchatka during his five days and five nights of dreams, and which had conducted his spirit into the regions of souls.
At the break of day the 4oo Assiniboin warriors surrounded the thirty feeble wigwams of the Blackfeet. The cry of war and of vengeance, which they shouted simultaneously, like so many bloodthirsty furies, awakened and filled with dreadful fear those unhappy mothers and children left unprotected there. In accordance with their expectations, the Assiniboins found few men in the camp; all had gone with the war-party of which I have made mention. The small number of Blackfeet youth defended themselves