I know he is in a
hurry, but our councils say it is better to wait for darkness, since the
cunning of the Pale-faces is too strong for the hands of our young men."
"When was a Narragansett slow to leap, after the whoop was given; or
unwilling to stay, when men of gray heads say 'tis better? I like your
counsel; it is full of wisdom. Yet an Indian is but a man! Can he fight
with the God of the Yengeese? He is too weak. An Indian is but a man,
though his skin be red!"
"I look into the clouds, at the trees, among the lodges," said the other,
affecting to gaze curiously at the different objects he named, "but I
cannot see the white Manitou. The pale-men were talking to him when we
raised the whoop in their fields, and yet he has not heard them. Go--my
son has struck their warriors with a strong hand; has he forgotten to
count how many dead lie among the trees with the sweet-smelling blossoms?"
"Metacom," returned he who has been called the Sachem of the
Narragansetts, stepping cautiously nearer to his friend, and speaking
lower, as if he feared an invisible auditor; "thou hast put hate into the
bosoms of the red men, but canst thou make them more cunning than the
Spirits? Hate is very strong, but cunning hath a longer arm.
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