Under
the auspices of an officer of the United States their chiefs were
summoned, in the form befitting great occasions, to meet in the yard of
a Mr. P.A. Sarpy's log trading-house. They came in grand costume, moving
in their fantastic attire with so much _aplomb_ and genteel measure that
the stranger found it difficult not to believe them high-born gentlemen,
attending a fancy-dress ball. Their aristocratically thin legs, of which
they displayed fully the usual Indian proportion, aided this illusion.
There is something too at all times very mock-Indian in the theatrical
French millinery tie of the Pottawottomi turban; while it is next to
impossible for a sober white man, at first sight, to believe that the
red, green, black, blue, and yellow cosmetics, with which he sees such
grave personages so variously dotted, diapered, cancelled, and
arabesqued are worn by them in any mood but one of the deepest and most
desperate quizzing. From the time of their first squat upon the ground
to the final breaking up of the council circle they sustained their
characters with equal self-possession and address.
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