government has now got our lands; we wish to be fed always, and just to dance." It is scarcely necessary to say that the Rice treaty of 1889, besides containing the above very objectionable point, has been broken by the government in many respects.

The government also is admittedly in debt to the Indians for large sums, arrears of former treaties. This condition keeps them from settling down to work, for they naturally think and say, "The government owes me so many hundreds of thousands of dollars; let it pay me these arrears, and I shall be rich; no need for me to work." It would be better if the government should dump down before them whatever it owes them; and when that is spent, then and not before, they will go to work.

PAYMENT OF ANNUITIES; GAMBLING AND DRINKING.

October is payment month; but very often payment is not made till January or later, entailing great loss on the Indians. They are afraid to go off hunting or even logging, lest payment should be made in their absence; and so they lose much more than the amount of the payment by waiting for it. As the time approaches, their anxiety for it is extreme; almost as far off as one can see them, the first question is, "When is payment going to be?" When it is made in January they must come about thirty miles to Leech Lake, from Cass lake and Winnibigoshish, over the frozen, wind-swept lakes; and they must camp about Leech Lake village in a temperature of perhaps thirty degrees below zero, with very little firewood, for near the village it has all been cut off; and they usually bring only the one blanket with them. We would not spend the long time, and endure the sufferings, for the amount, perhaps five dollars a head, which they get. Had they let the payment go, and gone hunting or working in a logging camp, they would have earned many times that amount. At payment they are all dressed up; it is a great frolic. All the sleigh bells, feathers, paint, and blankets, that can be mustered, are then put on. There are great dances every evening for joy of the payment. spend hours in painting their faces. Yet they are quiet and

The young fellows

orderly in their enjoyment. It seems to be a great pleasure to them merely to see each other and the crowds. There are more Indians assembled at that time than at any other.

There are always many houses rented as gambling houses at payment time, and one can make a tour of them, and find them all literally packed full of participants or spectators. There are always many professional Indian gamblers, who go to every payment, walking perhaps a hundred miles to the place. One meets companies of these a few days before payment begins. A large amount of the annuities paid is immediately gambled away, and a large amount of it goes for whisky. The gambling is all open and above board, in sight of everybody; and nobody seems to think there is anything wrong in it, except the Christians. Spectators go from one gambling house to another, and the fortunes of those who win or lose are of deep interest to them.

The traders all lay in large stocks of goods then, and hire many extra clerks. All day long the stores are packed full of people, and a great part of the night. Some are buying, some looking at the crowds; but all are enjoying themselves in a quiet way. The girls are dressed in their best; the young men have flutes of their own making, on which they play lovesongs to them. Outside of the store, there is darting about here and there, and good-natured revelry. From a distance the drum sounds, showing that the dance is in progress, and the groups visit all in turn, the dance, the stores, the gambling places. It is the time of the great annual frolic of the Ojibway, and every one feels happy.

The trader stands near the paying place, with his book in his hand showing the amount each man owes. As the man comes out with his payment, he looks wistfully at him, as any of us would; perhaps he asks the debtor for the money, perhaps not. The Indian will not be forced into paying; so some traders think it just as well to say nothing to them, to leave it to themselves. If they pay, they get a further credit; but if not, credit stops. There is no taking money from any one by force; nor is the creditor allowed in the paying place.

When the payment was made at Mille Lacs this year, it was in May; and the weather being fine, the Indians were all

camped. They danced every evening before the payment, for joy that it was to be. As soon as the money began to be paid, blankets were spread upon the ground in scores of places, right close to the paying-booth, and almost the entire population seemed at once to be engaged in gambling. Some had cards, some used the bullet and moccasin game. Even those who seemed to be almost dying were flourishing the cards. It seemed more universal there than elsewhere, because there is no mission at Mille Lacs. Within the next two days, four (as I remember) died of drinking pain-killer or something of that sort, and two became totally blind from lemon extract that had wood alcohol in it; notwithstanding the labors of the missionary with each one individually, many days beforehand, warning and entreating them not to touch liquor in any form and not to gamble. But white men are just as liable to these evils, for some of them on the frontier die of lemon extract, and some become blind.

Old Indians often lament the degeneracy of the present days; for when they were young, they say, only middle-aged or old men were allowed to drink liquor, and it was done in an orderly way, as the drinkers would be ranged in rows, and some young men were there to keep order, and if any of the drinkers became obstreperous, one of the young attendants would silence him, saying, "Now, you keep still." But in these degenerate days, they say, everybody, even little children, are allowed to drink.

At an Indian payment also is the time when young men show off on horseback before the people, and jerk and pull, and cruelly abuse their horses, to make them rear and plunge, and so to gain a little cheap admiration.

GATHERING WILD RICE; INDOLENCE OF THE MEN.

Wild rice gathering time, which comes in September, is an interesting occasion. There is a very large wild rice lake in the north part of the White Earth reservation; suppose that we visit it. We would find there six or seven hundred people, half-breeds and Indians, living in temporary wigwams or tents, who have come to gather wild rice. They have brought

their families with them. When the sun arises, hundreds of smokes go up from as many fires made outside their wigwams, where the women are cooking breakfast. Soon the breakfast is spread on the ground, and they reclining around it; and a delicious breakfast it is, nice light biscuit, ducks deliciously cooked, with wild rice and tea. Not many hotels could furnish such a meal, and none such a dining-room. After breakfast the women get into the canoes and launch out to beat off and gather the rice; but out of all the hundreds there, only a very few men, Christians, perhaps five or six, go with them. There has been a failure of crops; they have nothing at home, and only the wild rice they may gather now to depend on to carry them through the winter. The wild rice is such an abundant crop that a Norwegian man (the only white man working there, he being employed for wages), says that a man can make seven dollars a day, at the market price for rice, by gathering it. Here then is a God-send, and something that calls for a great effort. But the fascination of the game is so great that, with the exception of a very few, all the men spend the day lying on the ground gambling. So the golden opportunity is missed. In a month they will have nothing at home; while by exerting themselves for a very few days in the rice-field they might have had plenty all the year. One family brings away twenty-one large sacks of rice; all might have done so, had the men cared to help. But some even complained that they were hungry, because, though the ducks were flying about thick and they might have shot all they wanted, they could not bear to tear themselves away from the game long enough to do so. Such is Indian life, and the mixed-bloods generally are just the same; but some of the mixed-bloods are just as nice as any white people in all respects, and in nothing inferior to them.

Within the last three years large numbers of mixed-bloods on the White Earth reservation have rented their farms to Germans from the Sauk valley, while they have moved into White Earth village and built themselves little shanties, where they will live on the rents. This movement seems to be spreading, and all are anxious to rent who can.

RATIONS FROM THE GOVERNMENT.

The Indians and mixed-bloods who within the last seven years have removed to the White Earth reservation have been fed by the government with food of all kinds, pork, flour, tea, sugar, etc., some of them being so fed during a period of five years, and some during a less time. The Chippewa Commissioners, who had that matter in charge, paid the chief of those who had immigrated to exhort the others to raise a crop. They thought his influence and exhortation would be worth the money spent. He took the salary, but, realizing that if the Indians raised an abundance the rations would be cut off, he exhorted them all, instead, and charged them, not to plant a single thing, concluding that if they raised nothing and had nothing they would continue to be fed, but otherwise not. So sometimes in the same village where the chief lived, prolonged councils were held, and the people of the neighboring villages were called in a body; and the result they aimed at was to pass a law that no one should plant anything, for the above reason. In consequence, they planted very little. At first sight, this conduct seems very strange to us; but when we realize that these rations came out of their own funds, the proceeds of their pine forests, and also that several hundreds of thousands of dollars of arrears were due to them, we see that it was natural, from their standpoint, that they should wish to get out of their own funds all they could, and that whatever they succeeded in getting was to them so much clear gain. For the same reason they will work all kinds of games on the government doctor to get sick rations; or on those in charge of a school, to get clothing for the children. They know it comes out of their funds, and is their own, though trickery and deception have been used in getting it.

RATE OF MORTALITY; MIXED-BLOODS INCREASING.

The mortality among their children when in schools is extremely low, only a small fraction of what it is among those outside. Good food, good clothing, regular hours, and the weekly bath, make the difference.

Consumption is now very rife among the Indians. They say that in old times, when they lived practically in the open