“Yet I must kill thee, friend,” said the brother.

“Thou wilt!” answered the murderer, “it is thy duty; but wilt thou not remember the dangers we have passed together, and provide and console those I leave behind in my lodge?”

“I will,” answered the brother.  “Thy wife shall be my sister during her widowhood; thy children will never want game, until they can themselves strike the bounding deer.”

The two Indians continued their way in silence, till at once the brother of the murdered one stopped.

“We shall soon reach the chiefs,” said he; “I to revenge a brother’s death, thou to quit for ever thy tribe and thy children, Hast thou a wish?  Think, whisper!”

The murderer stood irresolute; his glance furtively took the direction of his lodge.  The brother continued,—­

“Go to thy lodge.  I shall wait for thee till the setting of the sun, before the council door.  Go! thy tongue is silent, but I know the wish of thy heart.  Go!”

Such traits are common in Indian life.  Distrust exists not among the children of the wilderness, until generated by the conduct of white men.  These stories, and thousand others, all exemplifying the triumph of virtue and honour over baseness and vice, are every day narrated by the elders, in presence of the young men and children.  The evening encampment is a great school of morals, where the red-skin philosopher embodies in his tales the sacred precepts of virtue.  A traveller, could he understand what was said, as he viewed the scene, might fancy some of the sages of ancient Greece inculcating to their disciples those precepts of wisdom which have transmitted their name down to us bright and glorious, through more than twenty centuries.

I have stated that the holy men among the Indians, that is to say, the keepers of the sacred lodges, keep the records of the great deeds performed in the tribe; but a tribe will generally boast more of the great virtues of one of its men than of the daring of its bravest warriors.  “A virtuous man,” they say, “has the ear of the Manitou, he can tell him the sufferings of Indian nature, and ask him to soothe them.”

Even the Mexicans, who, of all men, have had most to suffer, and suffer daily from the Apaches[19], cannot but do them the justice they so well deserve.  The road betwixt Chihuahua and Santa Fe is almost entirely deserted, so much are the Apaches dreaded; yet they are not hated by the Mexicans half as much as the Texans or the Americans.  The Apaches are constantly at war with the Mexicans, it is true; but never have they committed any of those cowardly atrocities which have disgraced every page of Texan history.  With the Apaches there are no murders in cold blood, no abuse of the prisoners.  A captive knows that he will either suffer death or be adopted in the tribe; but he has never to fear the slow fire and the excruciating torture so generally employed by the Indians in the United States territories.