My fathers fought with the naked red-man!« returned the Indian, sternly, in
the same language. »Is there no difference, Hawk-eye, between the stone-headed
arrow of the warrior, and the leaden bullet with which you kill?«
    »There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red skin!«
said the white man, shaking his head, like one on whom such an appeal to his
justice was not thrown away. For a moment he appeared to be conscious of having
the worst of the argument, then rallying again, he answered the objection of his
antagonist in the best manner his limited information would allow: »I am no
scholar, and I care not who knows it; but judging from what I have seen at deer
chaces, and squirrel hunts, of the sparks below, I should think a rifle in the
hands of their grandfathers, was not so dangerous as a hickory bow, and a good
flint-head might be, if drawn with Indian judgment, and sent by an Indian eye.«
    »You have the story told by your fathers,« returned the other, coldly waving
his hand. »What say your old men? do they tell the young warriors, that the
pale-faces met the red-men, painted for war and armed with the stone hatchet or
wooden gun?«
    »I am not a prejudiced man, nor one who vaunts himself on his natural
privileges, though the worst enemy I have on earth, and he is an Iroquois,
daren't deny that I am genuine white,« the scout replied, surveying, with secret
satisfaction, the faded colour of his bony and sinewy hand; »and I am willing to
own that my people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I can't approve.
It is one of their customs to write in books what they have done and seen,
instead of telling them in their villages, where the lie can be given to the
face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave soldier can call on his comrades to
witness for the truth of his words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man
who is too conscientious to misspend his days among the women, in learning the
names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his fathers, nor feel a
pride in striving to outdo them. For myself, I conclude all the Bumppos could
shoot; for I have a natural turn with a rifle, which must have been handed down
from generation to generation, as
