no Sioux was so uniformly found on the side of merciless councils.
    He had awaited, with an impatience which his long practised restraint could
with difficulty subdue, for the moment to arrive, when he might proceed to
execute the wishes of the Great Chief, without whose approbation and powerful
protection, he would not have dared to undertake a step, that had so many
opposers in the nation. But events had been hastening to an issue, between the
hostile parties, and the time had, now, arrived, greatly to his secret and
malignant joy, when he was free to act his will.
    The trapper found him distributing knives to the ferocious hags, who
received the presents, chanting a low monotonous song, that recalled the losses
of their people, in various conflicts with the whites, and which extolled the
pleasures and glory of revenge. The appearance of such a groupe, was enough of
itself to have deterred one, less accustomed to such sights than the old man,
from trusting himself within the circle of their wild and repulsive rites.
    Each of the crones, as she received the weapon, commenced a slow, and
measured, but ungainly, step, around the savage, until the whole were circling
him in a sort of magic dance. Their movements were timed, in some degree, by the
words of their songs, as were their gestures by the ideas. When they spoke of
their own losses, they tossed their long straight locks of gray into the air, or
suffered them to fall in confusion upon their withered necks, but as the
sweetness of returning blow for blow, was touched upon by any among them, it was
answered by a common howl as well as by gestures that were sufficiently
expressive of the manner in which they were exciting themselves, to the
necessary state of fury.
    Into the very centre of this ring of seeming demons, the trapper, now,
stalked, with the same calmness and observation, as he would have walked into a
village church. No other change was made by his appearance, than a renewal of
the threatening gestures, with, if possible, a still less equivocal display of
their remorseless intentions. Making a sign for them to cease, the old man
demanded -
    »Why do the mothers of the Tetons sing with bitter tongues? The Pawnee
prisoners are not yet in their village; their young men have not come back
loaded with scalps!«
    He was answered by a general howl, and a few of the boldest of the furies
even ventured to approach him, flourishing their knives within a dangerous
proximity of his own steady eye-balls