refusing to believe the report. The Osage Indians,
through whose territory they were now passing, were
among the largest and finest-formed red men of the West.
Their name came from the the river along which they
warred and hunted, but their proper title, as they called
themselves, was "the Wabashas," and from them, in later
years, we derive the familiar name of Wabash. A curious
tradition of this people, according to the journal of Lewis
and Clark, is that the founder of the nation was a snail,
passing a quiet existence along the banks of the Osage,
till a high flood swept him down to the Missouri, and left
him exposed on the shore. The heat of the sun at length
ripened him into a man; but with the change of his nature
he had not forgotten his native seats on the Osage, towards
which he immediately bent his way. He was, however,
soon overtaken by hunger and fatigue, when happily,
the Great Spirit appeared, and, giving him a bow and
arrow, showed him how to kill and cook deer, and cover
himself with the skin. He then proceeded to his original
residence; but as he approached the river he was met by
a beaver, who inquired haughtily who he was, and by what
authority he came to disturb his possession. The Osage
answered that the river was his own, for he had once lived on
its borders. As they stood disputing, the daughter of the
beaver came, and having, by her entreaties, reconciled her
father to this young stranger, it was proposed that the
Osage should marry the young beaver, and share with her
family the enjoyment of the river. The Osage readily
consented, and from this happy union there soon came the
village and the nation of the Wabasha, or Osages, who
have ever since preserved a pious reverence for their ances-
tors, abstaining from the chase of the beaver, because in
killing that animal they killed a brother of the Osage. Of

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