No one had demanded his death; for all who were interested, and felt their honor concerned in it, resided at a distance of thirty or forty miles. The death-song was repeated, as was also the shaking of hands. Both were again repeated the third and last time. Immediately after, Soue stepped up to his wife, a young woman of eighteen, with an infant in her arms, and another little child, two or three years old, standing by her side, and presented to her the bloody knife, which, till now, he had kept in his hand. She averted her face to conceal a falling tear, but, recovering herself, with a forced smile, took it. His sister was sitting by the side of his wife, wholly absorbed in grief, apparently insensible to what was passing, her eyes vacant, and fixed on some distant object. His pipe he gave to a young brother, who struggled hard to conceal his emotions. He then drank a little whisky and water, dashed the bottle on the ground, sung a few words in the Choctaw language, and, with a jumping, dancing step, hurried to his grave. His gun was so fixed by the side of a young sapling as to enable him to take his own life. No one, he had declared, should take it from him.
These preparations and ceremonies being now complete, he gave the necessary touch to the apparatus, the gun was discharged, and its contents passed through his heart. He instantly fell dead to the earth. The females sprang to the lifeless body. Some held his head, others his hands and feet, and others knelt at his side. He had charged them to show no signs of grief, while he lived, lest it should shake his resolution; as far as possible, they obeyed. Their grief was restrained until he was dead; it then burst forth in a torrent, and their shrieks and lamentations were loud and undissembled.
In the midst of the unnumbered wrongs which the Southern Indians have received at our hands, it gives us pleasure to record an act of justice toward an interesting Choctaw girl; while, at the same time, the incident which led to it is pertinent to our present purpose, which is, to show the amiable qualities which belong to the savages even in the untutored state.
“The Committee on Indian Affairs, in the late House of Representatives, reported a bill allowing a pension for life to Milly, an Indian woman of the Creek tribe, daughter of the celebrated prophet and chief, Francis, who was executed by order of General Jackson, in the Seminole war of 1817-18. The subject was brought to the notice of the Committee by the Secretary of War, at the instance of Lieutenant-colonel Hitchcock, who communicated the particulars of the incident upon which the recommendation to the favor of the government was founded.