a share without question, so long as they have anything themselves. No matter if he be utterly lazy, never doing a stroke of work, or if he be a gambler and has just come from the game, he seems to have just as good a right to the food as any one who is there. A white visitor is expected to pay something, perhaps ten cents for the meal, or twenty-five cents, but the Indian gets it as a matter of course. Sometimes, when they wish to pay great respect to the visitor, a white cotton cloth about two feet square is spread on the mat where he sits, and upon it his food is placed. That is the tablecloth.

There are no regular hours for eating; just whenever they get hungry and the good woman prepares something. In addition to the articles enumerated above, there are often delicious wild rice, ducks, venison, potatoes, or boiled corn. There may be partridges, or moose or bear meat, or many delicacies. Often one will get as delicious and well-cooked a meal as could be found anywhere. They are all very good cooks. Especially do they excel in cooking fish, which they nearly always boil, but sometimes fry. I have heard excellent white women cooks, who had lived long among them, say that an Indian woman could give a turn to fish that no white woman could equal. After the meal is over the dishes are gathered up by the women, and set slantwise on their edges around the outside of the wigwam until the next meal.

THE DRUM AND CHANTS.

Very often the man of the house, tired of doing nothing all day, takes his drum out of the bag that holds it, and settling himself begins to chant or sing, accompanying himself by beating his drum. He has many different kinds of chants, war songs, gambling songs, Sioux songs, songs of Sioux and Ojibways approaching each other with offers of peace, and many others. The chant is very intricate and beautiful. He sings it with his face directed upward, a sort of ecstatic look upon it, his mouth open, the drum between his knees, and a sort of shaking motion of his body. His voice is loud, highpitched, and resonant; on a still evening it would seem that he could be heard for a mile. The little children look at him with a sort of entranced wonder, while the women ply their work of preparing food, tanning a skin, or making beadwork

or moccasins. He, inspired by his own efforts, naturally feels himself to be a sort of superior being. At last he has sung all the chants he knows, chants which are extremely difficult for the most practiced musician to reduce to note or to reproduce; and after a few final flourishes, he puts the drum away, and comparative silence once more reigns.

SLEEPING IN THE WIGWAM.

Gradually the young children begin to grow sleepy. The mother asks the little one, "Do you wish to lie down?" and holds up the little blanket or quilt which is to be its sole covering. She wraps it round the child, and lays it down on the mat beside her, tucking the blanket in under its feet and over its head, and soon the little one is in the land of dreams. Gradually the older children, and then each member of the family, takes his or her blanket and a pillow, or makes a pillow out of something, and lies down in the place he or she has previously occupied, all covering up the head, but generally leaving the feet exposed against the bright fire. Indians always sleep, winter and summer, with their heads tightly covered up. It seems that they could not go to sleep otherwise. White people living with them soon learn the same habit, which for six months of the year is a necessity. The breathing of the same air over and over again within the blanket does not seem to produce any bad results; and the warm breath retained adds much to the slender stock of heat. Each person sleeps alone except that husband and wife have one blanket. The day clothes are never removed, either by men, women, or children, though in old times they are said. to have been removed. They are said to have formerly slept naked, rolled in their blanket only; but the example of the French voyageurs changed this. Even the moccasins sometimes are not removed. In a long sickness of weeks or months, it is common for the sick man to continue to wear his moccasins. The feet are at first exposed to the fire, and there is a row of them all round it; but as it dies down the sleepers instinctively draw them up under the blanket and tuck it in. Often every foot of the wigwam is covered with the prostrate bodies.

In about an hour the fire of the winter evening dies down, and the air coming in through the open top and the many

chinks makes it almost as cold in the wigwam as out of doors. It may be anywhere from ten to thirty degrees below zero inside and yet one blanket, old and worn at that, and not warm, is all that each sleeper has to cover him. Sometimes a thin quilt is spread in addition over the lower limbs, but one blanket seems to be the regular standard allowance, and is considered enough. The wonder is that they survive a week of such cold, but they do not seem to mind it. The white traveller who has been hospitably taken in has his thick underclothing on, moccasins and arctic overshoes, coat and fur overcoat, fur cap pulled over his ears, a warm new blanket enveloping all, head and foot, so that his breath is kept in like all the rest to add the greater warmth; and yet he lies there shivering, unable to sleep. At last in sheer desperation he starts up, and begins groping round the door of the wigwam and outside it, trying to find some wood to make a fire to relieve his sufferings. Yet all around him are sleeping calmly those who have on only a cotton shirt, cotton leggings, and the one thin blanket; not a tithe of the clothing he has. There is no doubt that such life, long continued, puts a strain on the constitution, especially of the young. Oftentimes when the traveller is feeling round for wood, a child will rise, throw aside its blanket, and stand there in the arctic temperature, coughing and again coughing. Its mother will rouse for a minute, and say, "My little son, are you cold?" and the answer will come, "Yes, I am almost cold." Such a hard life, even though it be not considered by them to be hard, along with other things, accounts for the high mortality among Indian children.

I have never been refused admission, and the privilege of passing the night, in any wigwam. When one has been travelling all day through the virgin forest, in a temperature far below zero, and has not seen a house nor a human being and knows not where or how he is to pass the night, it is the most comforting sight in the whole world to see the glowing column of light from the top of the wigwam of some wandering family out hunting, and to look in and see that happy group bathed in the light and warmth of the life-giving fire. No princely hotel in a great city can equal the blessedness of that wigwam. And no one, whether Ojibway or white, is ever refused admis

sion; on the contrary, they are made heartily welcome, as long as there is an inch of space.

ENDURANCE OF COLD.

The Ojibway women wear surprisingly little clothing, even in the coldest weather. A white cotton chemise, a calico dress, and a petticoat, are all, even in the coldest weather; and, of course, the blanket over all, for protection and ornament by day, and for a complete wardrobe by night. Besides there are mittens, not very thick, made by themselves, usually out of old pieces of cloth; and moccasins, with either socks or pieces of cloth wrapped round the foot to take the place of a stocking. Every winter many women, along with the men, start, say in January, to visit the Indians of another village a hundred miles off, either travelling on foot and packing their loads, or going with their ox teams and sleighs; but in any case they camp out every night, about four or five times each way. They enjoy every minute of it, and look forward to it with the keenest pleasure. White women, on the contrary, going over the road in a stage or covered sleigh, wrapped in furs and generally managing to get inside some sort of a house at night, where they sleep warm, are nearly always sick at the end of the route. To have gone with only the cotton chemise and calico dress and blanket, and to have slept out with only that covering, would have killed them.

The Pembina band of Ojibways have a custom of putting out the fires, and sitting all day, and lying all night, in the cold, for a few days before setting out on a winter journey, in order apparently to toughen themselves to it. None of the other Ojibways do so. It may be that because the former are prairie Indians, and so are exposed to the more severe blasts and greater hardships, they have adopted this method.

When an Indian is travelling and camps for the night, he always makes a fire, if possible, and if he has a fire and his blanket he considers that he is perfectly comfortable in any weather. If for any reason he cannot make a fire he curls himself up, like a ball, inside his blanket, resting only on his back on the snow. I have known them to sleep so out of doors, without a fire, when the temperature was forty degrees below zero, in the coldest nights that I remember in Minnesota,

and yet survive and continue the journey the next morning. As a general thing, however, the Ojibway considers it pretty hard, and himself in bad case, if he cannot have a fire, in a cold night, sleeping out of doors.

Although they are constantly travelling and exposed to blizzards far from home on the hunt, I cannot recall any who have frozen to death in the last twenty-five years, except one. He was one of our Indian catechists from Canada, in charge of the Cass Lake church and mission, George Johnson. On the night of the 26th of February, 1897, he was frozen to death while hunting deer. The thermometer was perhaps forty degrees below zero, and he was not a well man, having heart dis

ease.

SUCCESSION OF OCCUPATIONS DURING THE YEAR.

From the time when spring opens, there is a constant succession of events in Indian life, covering every week of the year until the winter sets in severely. These I cannot give in their exact order and sequence, and some of them I do not know. But, roughly speaking, there is first the arrival of the crow, about March 20th, the Indian's much looked for sign that grim winter is over, and that spring is at hand. When an Indian sees the crow, he knows that he has survived the starving time, winter, and that he will live; for he can always find abundant food during the spring and summer and fall months. The seeing of the first crow or hearing his call is therefore an occasion of great rejoicing, heralded everywhere. There is always anxious inquiry about that time, whether anyone has seen or heard a crow. Then follows moving to the sugar maple woods and the making of maple sugar by the women, while the men go trapping muskrats, and hunting generally. The women are so fond of sugar-making that no power and no money could keep them from it. The children all run away from the schools about the 22nd of March and go too. All are overjoyed to be living once more "under the greenwood tree." Often in their haste and anxiety they move out six weeks too soon, if there comes a spell of mild weather, and wait there freezing and starving. The sap usually begins to run April 5th, and the buds come out May 5th, when sugarmaking is over. Some families at Leech lake, which seems to