Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/350

our friend, entered, accompanied by three Black-Feet, a warrior, an interpreter, and a young man about twenty years of age. This youth, when about one year old, lost {313} both his parents; his mother, a captive among the Black-Feet, died the first days of her captivity; his father, whose country is far distant from the Black-Feet, is altogether lost to him. The poor orphan became the adopted child of a Black-Foot woman, who brought him up as she would her own offspring. The adopted son grew up, imbibing all the notions and customs of his new friends, knowing no other relations than those around him. To-*day, the woman whom he believed to be his real mother, declared to him that she was not; and that his father, whom he had not seen since he was one year old, was now sitting beside him. "Who is my father?" he anxiously enquired. "There," said the woman, pointing to the Nez-Percé chief, who entered the lodge with him. The doubts of the father were soon removed, as he hastily stripped the youth's garments from his back, and there discovered the mark of a burn received in the parental lodge while yet an infant. The sudden burst of feeling elicited from these children of nature at this unexpected meeting, can be better imagined than described. The chief has no grown children, he is therefore the more eloquent in endeavoring to persuade his son to return to his native country, presenting him, at {314} the same time, with one of the best and most beautiful of his steeds. I joined to the entreaties of the father, the strongest motives I could urge. The son, whose heart is divided between nature and grace, begged to be allowed to bid farewell to the companions and friends of his youth, who were now absent—he could not, he declared, thus abruptly leave her who, with motherly care and anxiety, had watched over him so many years, and whom he had always so tenderly