6. The Indians’ Gunpowder Harvest

At first the Indians were very kind to the white men; but after the white men began to be cruel and hard to them, they too grew hard and cruel, and nothing was too terrible for the Indians to do in revenge. They had very strange ways of carrying on their battles. They never came out and met their enemy face to face, but would skulk around behind trees in swamps or in the high grass. When the white men used guns and gunpowder, the Indians were terribly frightened, but it was not long before they themselves learned to use them. One day an old Indian chief begged some gunpowder from a white man, and ran away to his wigwam with it. The white man watched to see what he would do with it. When he reached his wigwam he called some of his friends about him, and, after a long council together, they began to plant the powder. They thought it would grow like corn and beans. Later a French trader persuaded some Indians living near the Missouri River to give him skins and furs in exchange for gunpowder, telling them it was a seed, which would grow if sown in the ground. The innocent Indians sowed all they bought, and placed a guard to protect the fields from wild beasts, going out to the field from time to time to see if the powder was growing. When they found out the trick that had been played on them they waited until the trader’s partner came to exchange more goods. Then the Indians who had been tricked into sowing gunpowder gathered, went into his tent, and each helped himself to what goods he wanted. Soon the whole stock disappeared. The Frenchman, in anger, went to the chief, who said, “Yes, you shall have justice as soon as the gunpowder harvest is gathered.” The Frenchman said, “Gunpowder grows in France, but your Missouri land is not good to produce it.”

All his arguments were in vain. The Indians said, “When the gunpowder harvest is reaped then the Frenchman shall have back his goods.”

So the French trader returned with less goods and less money than he went, finding out, when too late, that Indians, like some other men, can be deceived but once.