This tribe is certainly far superior in civilization and comforts to all other tribes of Indians, the Shoshones not excepted.  The Wakoe wigwams are well built, forming long streets, admirable for their cleanness and regularity.  They are made of long posts, neatly squared, firmly fixed into the ground, and covered over with tanned buffalo-hides, the roof being formed of white straw, plaited much finer than the common summer hats of Boston manufacture.  These dwellings are of a conical form, thirty feet in height and fifteen in diameter.  Above the partition-walls of the principal room are two rows of beds, neatly arranged, as on board of packet-ships.  The whole of their establishment, in fact, proves that they not only live at ease, but also enjoy a high degree of comfort and luxury.

Attached to every wigwam is another dwelling of less dimensions, the lower part of which is used as a provision-store.  Here is always to be found a great quantity of pumpkins, melons, dried peaches, grapes, and plums, cured vension, and buffalo tongues.  Round the store is a kind of balcony, leading to a small room above it.  What it contained I know not, though I suspect it is consecrated to the rites of the Wakoe religion.  Kind and hospitable as they were, they refused three or four times to let us penetrate in this sanctum sanctorum, and of course we would not press them further.

The Wakoes, or, to say better, their villages, are unknown, except to a few trappers and hunters, who will never betray the kind hospitality they have received by showing the road to them.  There quiet and happiness have reigned undisturbed for many centuries.  The hunters and warriors themselves will often wander in the distant settlements of the Yankees and Mexicans to procure seeds, for they are very partial to gardening; they cultivate tobacco; in fact, they are, I believe, the only Indians who seriously occupy themselves with agriculture, which occupation does not prevent them from being a powerful and warlike people.

As well as the Apaches and the Comanches, the Wakoes are always on horseback; they are much taller and possess more bodily strength than either of these two nations, whom they also surpass in ingenuity.  A few years ago, three hundred Texans, under the command of General Smith, met an equal party of the Wakoes hunting to the east of the Cross Timbers.  As these last had many fine horses and an immense provision of hides and cured meat, the Texans thought that nothing could be more easy than routing the Indians and stealing their booty.  They were, however, sadly mistaken; when they made their attack, they were almost all cut to pieces, and the unburied bones of two hundred and forty Texans remain blanching in the prairie, as a monument of their own rascality and the prowess of the Wakoes.

Comfortable and well treated as we were by that kind people, we could not remain longer with them; so we continued our toilsome and solitary journey.  The first day was extremely damp and foggy; a pack of sneaking wolves were howling about, within a few yards of us, but the sun came out about eight o’clock, dispersing the fog and also the wolves.