The Conspiracy of Neamathla - Page 2

white men had not acted up to it.
The red men had received none of the money and the cattle that had been
promised them: the treaty, therefore, was at an end, and they did not mean
to be bound by it."

Governor Duval calmly represented to him that the time appointed in the
treaty for the payment and delivery of the money and the cattle had not yet
arrived. This the old chieftain knew full well, but he chose, for the
moment, to pretend ignorance. He kept on drinking and talking, his voice
growing louder and louder, until it resounded all over the village. He held
in his hand a long knife, with which he had been rasping tobacco; this he
kept flourishing backward and forward, as he talked, by way of giving
effect to his words, brandishing it at times within an inch of the
governor's throat. He concluded his tirade by repeating that the country
belonged to the red men, and that sooner than give it up his bones and the
bones of his people should bleach upon its soil.

Duval saw that the object of all this bluster was to see whether he could
be intimidated. He kept his eye, therefore, fixed steadily on the chief,
and the moment he concluded with his menace, seized him by the bosom of his
hunting shirt, and clinching his other fist:

"I've heard what you have said," replied he. "You have made a treaty, yet
you say your bones shall bleach before you comply with it. As sure as there
is a sun in heaven, your bones _shall_ bleach, if you do not fulfill
every article of that treaty I I'll let you know that I am _first_
here, and will see that you do your duty!"

Upon this, the old chieftain threw himself back, burst into a fit of
laughing, and declared that all he had said was in joke. The governor
suspected, however, that there was a grave meaning at the bottom of this
jocularity.

For two months, everything went on smoothly: the Indians repaired daily to
the log-cabin palace of the governor, at Tallahassee, and appeared
perfectly contented. All at once they ceased their visits, and for three or
four days not one was to be seen. Governor Duval began to apprehend that
some mischief was brewing. On the evening of the fourth day a chief named
Yellow-Hair, a resolute, intelligent fellow, who had always evinced an
attachment for the governor, entered his cabin about twelve o'clock at
night, and informed him that between four and five hundred warriors,
painted and decorated, were assembled to hold a secret war-talk at
Neamathla's town. He had slipped off to give intelligence, at the risk of
his life, and hastened back lest his absence should be discovered.

Governor Duval passed an anxious night after this intelligence. He knew the
talent and the daring character of Neamathla; he