Rivenoak now told his people that the pale-face had proved himself
to be a man. He might live with the Delawares, but he had not been
made woman with that tribe. He wished to know whether it was the
desire of the Hurons to proceed any further. Even the gentlest
of the females, however, had received too much satisfaction in the
late trials to forego their expectations of a gratifying exhibition,
and there was but one voice in the request to proceed. The
politic chief, who had some such desire to receive so celebrated a
hunter into his tribe, as a European Minister has to devise a new
and available means of taxation, sought every plausible means of
arresting the trial in season, for he well knew, if permitted to go
far enough to arouse the more ferocious passions of the tormentors,
it would be as easy to dam the waters of the great lakes of his
own region, as to attempt to arrest them in their bloody career.
He therefore called four or five of the best marksmen to him, and
bid them put the captive to the proof of the rifle, while at the same
time he cautioned them touching the necessity of their maintaining
their own credit, by the closest attention to the manner of exhibiting
their skill.
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