offer to a Sagamore of a conquered race — a race which already was nearly extinct — investing this Mohican Sagamore with the prerogatives of his very conquerors by the subtlety of my opening phrase:

“O Sagamore! Roya-neh! Noble of the three free clans of a free Mohican people! Our people have need of you. The path is dark to Catharines-town. Terror haunts those frightful shades. Roya-nef! We need you!

“Brother! Is there occasion for belts between us to confirm a brother’s words, when this leathern girth I wear around my body carries a red wampum which all may see and read — my war axe and my knife?”

I raised my right arm slowly, and drew with my forefinger a great circle in the air around us: