and inverted it over his head, he would not lay it down for twenty miles. About two miles is as far as most men, even the strongest, wish to carry a canoe, without a rest. He was no orator, and said very little; but when he did say a few words, that ended the matter. All felt that "Daniel had come to judgment." He alone of all chiefs was revered and obeyed by all the people. He was free from all the weaknesses which, in different forms, attached to all the others, as they do to all men, and he towered over them all. Looking back on his career closed, one sees that he was made by nature and his Creator a truly great man. It was his delight to go every summer, on foot, even up to eighty years of age, with a party of men of his band, hundreds of miles over the prairies to visit the Piegan Indians. He could not understand a word they said, but they were relatives, he said; their fathers had hunted together long ago, and the pleasure of seeing them was, to him, great. His nature craved that excursion on the boundless prairies every year. He pointed out places on the White Earth reservation where the Sioux had chased him, and the clumps of poplars where he hid from them and was safe.

THE OJIBWAYS OF RED LAKE.

About eight hundred Ojibways live along the south shore of Red lake, and about four hundred on the long point at the Narrows between the southern and northern parts of the lake. The houses of those living on the south shore are built by themselves of logs, plastered with clay. being small and with one room only. A feature of the Red Lake home is the chimney, made by themselves out of a whitish clay. It burns a very great deal of wood, but is admirable. There are no chairs, tables, beds, or stoves, in the house; but there is a board floor cleanly swept, with rush mats all round, on which the inmates sit, eat, and sleep. The chimney is in the corner farthest from the door, and nothing can exceed the warmth, comfort, and cheerfulness of a Red Lake home on a winter evening when the bright fire in the chimney floods the room with light and heat. The wood is pine, cut four feet long, and is placed on end in the chimney. It ignites readily, and burns with a bright flame. The family or families and visitors are sitting all round on the mats, with their bed-covering neatly

folded up by the wall, and animated conversation and cheerful laughter are heard on every side. No enjoyment that we have in our homes, with the fire shut up in an iron box, is equal to the flooded light and warmth of the Red Lake home. The food-it may be boiled corn alone or perhaps with fish—is neatly and cleanly served on plates laid on the mats, beside each person.

It takes a great pile of wood to keep the fire going in the open chimney for twenty-four hours. It is the business of the women to supply it. Every day one can see, about four o'clock in the afternoon, long strings of women, each with her ax and packing strap, going out into the woods perhaps a mile; soon the woods are vocal with the axes; and then equally long strings of women are seen issuing from the woods, each with her load upon her back, and each woman packs an immense quantity. This is thrown down at the door of the house, and brought in as needed. If a woman at Red lake meets a man on the path, she goes off to one side, perhaps into the snow above her knees, about four feet from the path, and there patiently waits for the man to pass.

The Red Lake Indians are the most industrious of all the Indians; they are apt to be always doing something to make a living. They will starve with the seed corn by them, rather than eat it. They have raised quantities of corn in their little fields by the shore of the lake, for a hundred years past, planting the same ground over and over again, and it does not seem to be exhausted. Sometimes the land is not even plowed, or hoed over deeply, for the new crop, but just planted as it is. Along in the 70's one could see strings of women packing corn on their backs a distance of five miles or more, to sell it to the traders at a cent a pound for goods. As the railroad was then far from Red lake, perhaps a hundred miles, the prices of the provisions they got in exchange for their corn were very high, flour $5 a sack, common tea 50 cents a pound, four or five pounds of pork for a dollar, and sugar about the same, so that their corn brought them very little, only equal to a small fraction of a cent a pound.

The four hundred Ojibways at the Narrows lived in a more heathenish way, in those days, than any others of this people. There was the log house, but extremely small, and extremely

filthy and ill-smelling, never swept nor tidied, but having all sorts of refuse inside. The inmates looked unwashed and unkempt; the children wore no clothes, or only the white cotton shirt, if any; and the grown up people in summer wore very little. Instead of glass a piece of white cotton cloth would be nailed across the window, as in many other villages where they are poor. They have always a particularly abundant supply of fish there; and they lived on fish alone, sometimes for months without even salt. They did not seem to crave even salt. Yet they seemed to be perfectly healthy. They have a splendid rich black loam soil, much finer than I have seen anywhere else in the Red Lake region, bearing a magnificent deciduous forest. Anything they plant grows to the greatest perfection.

Around their villages we saw images of birds, etc., their protecting deities to ward off ill luck and sickness. The gambling drum and the medicine drum were always sounding; and all they wanted was to be left undisturbed in their heathenish ways. They would have no school, church, or mission. We saw women sitting round a fire in the night. That was where a person had died within three days; the wigwam had been pulled down, and they had made a fire, because then the soul on its way to its future abode would have a fire and be comfortable. If they made no fire, the season being winter, the departed soul would have no fire, and its sufferings could be imagined. After three days it was no longer necessary, for the soul had reached its abode. When a mother puts her little boys to sleep at night, she first draws what seems to be a quart of water into her mouth, and then squirts it, with force enough apparently to turn a mill wheel, into the ears of each, first on one side of the head and then on the other. That is to keep off evil spirits. She feels that she can keep house just to perfection, and can raise children just as they ought to be raised. The unusual heathenism of the Indians at the Narrows arises from their living in such a remote place, where civilization has never penetrated. A few years ago they were living apparently as they did when Columbus landed.

THE OJIBWAYS OF CASS AND LEECH LAKES.

The life of the Indians at Cass Lake differs little from that of the others, except that they are the most improvident

of all the Indians. They raise very little corn or potatoes and therefore suffer most frequently and severely from starvation. All through the spring, summer and fall, food provided by the bounty of nature, as venison, moose-meat, wild rice, and fish, is extremely abundant; and they then forget the long cold winter, and the need to provide for it. Many families start in to pass the winter without even a potato or any other food ahead. Their sufferings in consequence are severe, year after year.

There are two kinds of homes at Leech lake, which are very different, the heathen and the Christian. The former is a small log shanty, with earthen floor, and so low that one can touch the roof. There is no fireplace, but an old broken cooking stove and also a heating stove. There is no bed, table, nor chair, but the usual mats. The house is never swept nor cleaned in any way; the day clothing and bed coverings are as dirty as they can be; and spittle and hawkings from the throat and nose are everywhere so that one cannot sit down, or put his hand anywhere, without touching them. The house is nearly as full of people as it can hold; sometimes big girls and young women lolling over each other, and in each other's laps. The old man is smoking, and the young man may be painting his face, greasing his hair, and tying sleigh bells round his ankles for a dance. The drum is tied in a bag suspended, and there is a pack of cards. Everything speaks of idleness, heathenism, and filthiness. There is one dim window light, and the place is dark and forbidding. The Christian home at Leech lake is also a log house, but it is large, light, and airy. There is a board floor, and it is so clean you might bake bread on it any time, it being scrubbed to whiteness; there are a table, chairs, cook stove and heating stove. The bed in one corner looks clean and inviting, and it is as well made as any white woman could make hers, and has decorated pillow shams. Pictures are on the walls, and altogether it is an inviting home that anyone might be pleased to live in. The meals are nicely served, on a clean white tablecloth, and in clean dishes. There is nice warm bread, pork, potatoes, and tea. The comfort and cleanliness are quite equal or superior to those of the average white set

tler. The inmates are cleanly dressed, the man has a white shirt, and they look respectable. The reason of the difference is that they are Christians.

HEARTINESS IN EATING, AND FISH THE STAPLE FOOD.

If the Ojibway can get flesh, as venison or beef, he likes it best of all and will make his meal almost exclusively of it. I have seen a woman, lately delivered of an infant, eat what seemed to me to be two pounds of beef, without anything else, and it did her good.

We hear a great deal of how much Indians eat. The Ojibway eats no more than any other man, when once his hunger is satisfied. Often he has had very little to eat for a long time, and, like any of us, he would make a good hearty meal when he does get to good food. The Indian children in a school do not eat as much as white children when once they get filled up.

The Ojibway's staple food now is fish. Every morning the first thing the woman living on Leech lake, Cass lake, or Winnibigoshish, does when she awakes is to take her paddle, jump into her canoe, and draw her nets. Usually she takes more fish than they can use. Indians have averred to me that no Indians living on those lakes were ever hungry, and that if any said they were they lied. With a very little forethought in laying in a supply of fish, no one, I am sure, need ever suffer hunger. In the fall, when the lakes are just freezing up, is the time of their laying in their supply of fish for the winter. An Indian woman at Leech lake lately told me that she set her nets four nights at that time and caught eight hundred splendid tullibees, a species of white fish. That was about the usual catch. Every family can take an unlimited quantity, for winter use, at that season. They are hung up by the tails to freeze dry. In front of every house on the lakes at that season is a rude frame, with thousands of fish hung on rods driven through the tails, the winter's supply of food. Out of the 1,000 Indians at Leech lake, only one man was ever known to draw or set a net; it is left exclusively to women.

What then is the life of the Ojibway man in his native state? I mean the heathen man. The only thing he does that ever I could see, is to hunt a little, in spring and fall. Occasionally a man will be found who will raise some corn and