Their intercourse with
the French impressed that mercurial people with exalted notions of
their humanity, chivalry, and nobleness of nature. Can it be that these
historians only wrote romances? You must not disturb this romance. If
it is an illusion let me enjoy it; do not strip from it the beard, the
hair, the hunting-shirt, the bow and quiver--reality or fiction, it is
sweet to the memory. How often have I wandered from our home and stood
here alone and conjured from the spirit-land the ghosts of the Great
Suns, the Stung Serpent, and the chief of the Beard, and hers who
warned the French of the conspiracy for their destruction. In my
day-dreaming I have talked with these; and learned with delight of
their bliss in their eternal hunting-grounds. And as I have knelt here,
they in hosts have come to me with all their legends and long accounts
against the white man, and I have wept above these dry bones, and felt
too it was the fate of the white man, when his mission shall have been
completed on earth, and his nation's age bear him into the ground, and
only his legends shall live a tradition, like that of the Natchez.
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