"Let her be taken to the village temple," he said to his prime-minister, "and be fed by warriors on the flesh of wolves." The Listening Crane was a patient man; he was the "man that waits" of the old French proverb; all things came to him.

He had waited for an opportunity to change his brother's mind, and it had come.

Again, he waited for him to die; and, like Methuselah and others, he died.

He had heard of a race more powerful than the Natchez--a white race; he waited for them; and when the year 1682 saw a humble "black gown" dragging and splashing his way, with La Salle and Tonti, through the swamps of Louisiana, holding forth the crucifix and backed by French carbines and Mohican tomahawks, among the marvels of that wilderness was found this: a child of nine sitting, and--with some unostentatious aid from her medicine-man--ruling; queen of her tribe and high-priestess of their temple.

Fortified by the acumen and self-collected ambition of Listening Crane, confirmed in her regal title by the white man's Manitou through the medium of the "black gown," and inheriting her father's fear-compelling frown, she ruled with majesty and wisdom, sometimes a decreer of bloody justice, sometimes an Amazonian counselor of warriors, and at all times--year after year, until she had reached the perfect womanhood of twenty-six--a virgin queen.
On the 11th of March, 1699, two overbold young Frenchmen of M.
D'Iberville's little exploring party tossed guns on shoulder, and ventured away from their canoes on the bank of the Mississippi into the wilderness.