The captain, in his replies, made use of
familiar illustrations, calculated to strike their minds, and impress
them with such an idea of the might of his nation, as would induce them
to treat with kindness and respect all stragglers that might fall in
their path. To their inquiries as to the numbers of the people of the
United States, he assured them that they were as countless as the blades
of grass in the prairies, and that, great as Snake River was, if they
were all encamped upon its banks, they would drink it dry in a single
day. To these and similar statistics, they listened with profound
attention, and apparently, implicit belief. It was, indeed, a striking
scene: the captain, with his hunter's dress and bald head in the midst,
holding forth, and his wild auditors seated around like so many statues,
the fire lighting up their painted faces and muscular figures, all
fixed and motionless, excepting when the pipe was passed, a question
propounded, or a startling fact in statistics received with a movement
of surprise and a half-suppressed ejaculation of wonder and delight.
The fame of the captain as a healer of diseases, had accompanied him to
this village, and the great chief, O-push-y-e-cut, now entreated him to
exert his skill on his daughter, who had been for three days racked with
pains, for which the Pierced-nose doctors could devise no alleviation.
The captain found her extended on a pallet of mats in excruciating pain.
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