We shall not detain the narrative, to relate the
quaint morals with which he next endeavoured to cheer the drooping
spirits of his more sensitive companion, or the occasional pithy and
peculiar benedictions that he pronounced, on all the bands of the
Dahcotahs, commencing with those whom he accused of stealing or
murdering, on the banks of the distant Mississippi, and concluding, in
terms of suitable energy, with the Teton tribe. The latter more than
once received from his lips curses as sententious and as complicated
as that celebrated anathema of the church, for a knowledge of which
most unlettered Protestants are indebted to the pious researches of
the worthy Tristram Shandy. But as Middleton recovered from his
exhaustion he was fain to appease the boisterous temper of his
associate, by admonishing him of the uselessness of such
denunciations, and of the possibility of their hastening the very evil
he deprecated, by irritating the resentments of a race, who were
sufficiently fierce and lawless, even in their most pacific moods.
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