"But how came they here?" I questioned.
"I was coming to that. It was some trouble with the French in Bienville's day. Only a few escaped, and they were driven into these hills; yet 't is said they saved a considerable amount of treasure which had come to them from their fathers, together with some of the mummified bodies of their kings. It is forty years since they discovered this dell, and only the older men have any memory of the discovery."
"What do they call themselves?"
"'Nalmas' was the word the Queen used, but they are that same people whom we knew about in New Orleans as 'Natchez'; their old country was called Tlapalan."
I sat silent, pondering upon his words, but before I thought out further questioning, a warrior, bearing food, entered the hut. Setting this down upon the ground before us, he drew back into the gathering night shadows without uttering a word. That which I had just heard caused me to gaze upon the fellow--a tall, stalwart savage--with newly awakened interest, and I could not help observing again how widely the type differed from those Indian tribes with whom my wandering border life had rendered me familiar. Not only was this man of fairer, clearer complexion, but his cheek-bones were not in the least prominent, his nose was wide at the base and somewhat flattened, while his forehead sloped sharply backward in such peculiar form as to warrant the opinion that the deformity arose from a compression of the frontal bone in infancy. The hair, although worn long and flowing down the back, was decidedly wavy, and not coarse; the color was a ruddy brown. The eyes of these Indians were bold, cruel, crafty, yet in many instances the coloring was so light as to be startling; the average stature was greater than that of those other Indians that I knew. In short, they impressed me as being all that was claimed, a distinct race, with characteristics more nearly allied to the Ethiopian and the Mongolian than to the surrounding red races. As I figured this out somewhat slowly, De Noyan busted himself with the meal, and, thus engrossed, apparently forgot the topic of our conversation.
"And did this Queen Naladi claim to belong to this old race?" I questioned, thinking thus to test his observation.
"Why not?" he asked in return, suspending operations, and glancing up at me in surprise. "She referred to herself as the 'Daughter of the Sun,' once saying that her ancestors ruled over this people for a thousand years."
"She told you that?"
"At least so the black interpreted her words. Why question it?"