invited them to meet in council. There I reproached them vigorously with their unfaithfulness to the solemn promise they had made me the year before, to live in peace with their neighbors the Potawatomies. I made them feel the injustice they were guilty of in attacking a peaceable nation that wished them nothing but good, and who had even prevented their hereditary foes, the Otoes, Pawnees, Sauks, Foxes and Iowas from coming to invade them. Finally I advised them to employ all means to effect a prompt reconciliation and avoid the terrible reprisal which could not fail to come upon them; being well assured that the Potawatomies and their allies would come soon to take vengeance for their perjury, and perhaps to wipe out their whole tribe. Abashed at their fault and dreading its consequences, they conjured me to serve once more as their mediator, and to assure the Potawatomies of their sincere resolution to bury the hatchet forever.
The next day, the 14th of November, accompanied by an Iroquois half-breed, I embarked upon the Missouri in a canoe; for my horse, worn out with fatigue, was unable to carry me farther. The snow and the cold that followed filled the stream with ice-cakes, which, striking upon the snags of which the river is full, rendered navigation doubly dangerous. We were still 300 miles from Council Bluffs, the first establishment one comes to below the Vermillion, and in a region where all the prairie grasses and plants of the forest had been burned by the Indians to the very banks of the river, and from which in consequence all the animals had withdrawn. We did, however, kill a fine deer, which seemed embarrassed and stood motionless upon the bank of the river as if to receive the mortal blow. Five times we were on the point of perishing by being overturned among the numerous snags, upon which the icefloes dragged us despite all our efforts. We passed ten days in this dangerous and disquieting navigation, sleeping on sand-bars at night and taking only two meals, evenI7