Note 8 — LETTER—No. 27.

Several years after I painted the portrait of this extraordinary man, and whilst I was delivering my Lectures in the City of New York, I first received intelligence of his death, in the following singular manner:—I was on the platform in my Lecture-room, in the Stuyvesant Institute, with an audience of twelve or fourteen hundred persons, in the midst of whom were seated a delegation of thirty or forty Sioux Indians under the charge of Major Pilcher, their agent; and I was successfully passing before their eyes the portraits of a number of Sioux chiefs, and making my remarks upon them. The Sioux instantly recognized each one as it was exhibited, which they instantly hailed by a sharp and startling yelp. But when the portrait of this chief was placed before them, instead of the usual recognition, each one placed his hand over his mouth, and gave a “hush—sh—” and hung down their heads, their usual expressions of grief in case of a death. From this sudden emotion, I knew instantly, that the chief must be dead, and so expressed my belief to the audience. I stopped my Lecture a few moments to converse with Major Pilcher who was by my side, and who gave me the following extraordinary account of his death, which I immediately related to the audience; and which being translated to the Sioux Indians, their chief arose and addressed himself to the audience, saying that the account was true, and that Ha-wan-je-tah was killed but a few days before they left home.

The account which Major Pilcher gave was nearly as follows:—

“But a few weeks before I left the Sioux country with the delegation, Ha-wan-je-tah (the one horn) had in some way been the accidental cause of the death of his only son, a very fine youth; and so great was the anguish of his mind at times, that he became frantic and insane. In one of these moods he mounted his favourite war-horse with his bow and his arrows in his hand, and dashed off at full speed upon the prairies, repeating the most solemn oath, ‘that he would slay the first living thing that fell in his way, be it man or beast, or friend or foe.’

“No one dared to follow him, and after he had been absent an hour or two, his horse came back to the village with two arrows in its body, and covered with blood! Fears of the most serious kind were now entertained for the fate of the chief, and a party of warriors immediately mounted their horses, and retraced the animal’s tracks to the place of the tragedy, where they found the body of their chief horribly mangled and gored by a buffalo bull, whose carcass was stretched by the side of him.

“A close examination of the ground was then made by the Indians, who ascertained by the tracks, that their unfortunate chief, under his unlucky resolve, had met a buffalo bull in the season when they are very stubborn, and unwilling to run from any one; and had incensed the animal by shooting a number of arrows into him, which had brought him into furious combat. The chief had then dismounted, and turned his horse loose, having given it a couple of arrows from his bow, which sent it home at full speed, and then had thrown away his bow and quiver, encountering the infuriated animal with his knife alone, and the desperate battle resulted as I have before-mentioned, in the death of both. Many of the bones of the chief were broken, as he was gored and stamped to death, and his huge antagonist had laid his body by the side of him, weltering in blood from an hundred wounds made by the chief’s long and two-edged knife.”

So died this elegant and high-minded nobleman of the wilderness, whom I confidently had hoped to meet and admire again at some future period of my life. (Vide plate 86).