The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas by Frederick Marryat

During my convalescence, my tent, or I should say, the lawn before it, became a kind of general divan, where the warriors and elders of the tribe would assemble, to smoke and relate the strange stories of days gone by. Some of them appeared to me particularly beautiful; I shall, therefore, narrate them to the reader. One old chief began as follows: --

"I will tell ye of the Shkote-nah Pishkuan, or the boat of fire, when I saw it for the first time. Since that, the grass has withered fifteen times in the prairies, and I have grown weak and old. Then I was a warrior, and many scalps have I taken on the eastern shores of the Sabine. Then, also, the Pale-faces living in the prairies were good; we fought them because we were enemies, but they never stole anything from us, nor we from them.