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suffering, or belated, or cold, or needing direction, and he will find the old woman one who will help him, more probably than any one else. Perhaps their own long experience of great suffering has taught them compassion for others.

EXPECTATION OF GIFTS.

When a white man approaches a camp of heathen Indians, they will often call out from a long distance, as far as they can see him, "We are very hungry; we are starving to death; we have not eaten a morsel for three days." At the same time they laugh heartily and slap their thighs, as if it was the best joke in the world. Likewise they often tell their visitors, with great insistence, of their extreme poverty, and the hunger they suffer. They seem to think there is a special merit in it, in fact seem proud of it. Their poverty is a favorite subject of talk with them. Often two families will chaff each other, in a good-natured way, about it.

From the habit, in former times, of United States Indian agents and military officers, to give something to the Indians when they met them, it has come now to be very natural for the heathen Indians to expect the white man to give them something, as food or money, when he meets them, and they are apt to ask him for it, but especially for tobacco. From that old custom, the first thought that naturally arises now in the heathen man's mind, when he sees a white man approaching, is that he will get something from him. Knowing also that the white man is so rich, and they so poor, naturally strengthens that feeling.

LACK OF SYMPATHY; SENSE OF HUMOR.

The Indians, strange to say, are not prone to assist each other in misfortune or necessity, as other people are. Where, for instance, a number are hauling loads together, with teams, and something befalls one, the others are apt to pass him by and leave him to shift for himself as best he can. Two or three years ago an old man and his wife were about eighteen miles from the White Earth Agency, when in attempting to mount his horse he broke his thigh. They had five horses,

and they had to give an Indian who was there one of those horses, before he would take a message to the doctor, only eighteen miles distant. It was worth about a dollar to do it. That is about the usual way; they are apt to exact a very high and extortionate price for anything they do for each other.

This brings to mind also that they are very calculating and mercenary. A thing is never done out of generosity or goodness, but with an eye to advantage. If one gives a present, for instance, to another, it is calculated that by a return present, or in some other way, a greater advantage is to accrue to the giver. It is true that they share food with any one who comes, so long as they have it; and in that way, if one happens to be industrious and have food, he is eaten out of house and home by a multitude of idle ones who flock there for that purpose. Apart from that custom of hospitality, they are not given to be generous in assisting each other, and from the unfortunate they are ready to exact the highest rate.

They are also apt to be very jealous of any one, as a sick person or one in misfortune, having his or her wants relieved. They feel that they also ought to have a similar amount, or even try to get it away from the sick person. In this, as in so many other instances, I am speaking of the heathen Indians.

Their sense of humor and of the ludicrous is exceedingly keen, more so than in our own race. No people are quicker than they to see the funny side of anything; and no people laugh at it more. They are capital at telling funny stories, and thoroughly enjoy fun. They seek after it constantly; they brighten their lives with it. Some of them are what one would call "jolly" always.

HEATHEN DANCES AND THEIR INFLUENCE.

The heathen dance, with the beating of the drum, exercises a wonderful fascination over the Indians. When they become Christians, they themselves understand that they give up the heathen dance, for the two are the opposites of each other; but yet they are drawn into it again and again. There seems to be a chord that carries the throbbing of the drum into the Indian's heart. The drummers sit in the center,

chanting; the men start up, and dance round them, excited, quivering, whooping. They go through all the motions of sighting, pursuing, killing, and scalping an enemy; and it is most interesting to see them. Then there is an interval or rest; the drums cease, the dancers sit down, and all is quiet. Next some man dressed in ancient Indian garb, nearly naked, painted, with feathers in his hair and a tomahawk in his hand, gets into the arena and makes an address. The neverexhausted subject of the addresses is about killing and scalping enemies, perhaps tearing out their hearts and drinking the blood. As the man describes how the shot brought down the enemy, or how the tomahawk cleft his skull, the drum gives a sympathetic tap, as each life goes out. When he has finished, the drums start with redoubled vehemence, the drummers accompanying them with a high-pitched chant; while a circle of women singers outside add their shrill voices. The men are dressed in moccasins, cotton leggings which leave the thighs bare, breech-clouts, and perhaps shirts, perhaps none. Strings of beads adorn their bodies, skunk skins are tied under their knees, and strings of sleigh bells are wound round their ankles or waists. Their faces have all the colors of the rainbow; and their hair is stiff with pomatum. After they have danced again, there is silence once more, and another orator rises. This time the address may be about something of the present that is uppermost on their minds, some grievance under which they are laboring, or some important project that is on hand. At the dances all important things are discussed; and if there be any deviltry on hand, there is the place where they work themselves up to it. The dance is the arena where they strive to outshine each other in eloquence, in boldness of design; and where, in the originality of their projects, they bid for popular favor.

In the excitement of the dance, moreover, and in order to gain the reputation of great men, they give away their property to each other, a horse, a blanket, a gun, anything they have. The man, as he goes capering round the ring and whooping, looking here and there as if he was uncertain what to do, suddenly sticks a rod in the ground before another man. That is the pledge of a horse that he gives to that

man, and then all the others look on him with admiration; he is strong-hearted and brave; he does not mind giving away the only horse he has. It is wonderful how the excitement of the dance works on them to give away all they have. I have known a government employee to go and strip the bed clothing from his wife's bed, and give it away in the dance. That is one reason why they keep up the dance, to get presents. The little children from the schools, if there are any schools, are there, imitating their elders; they have jumped out the school windows to get to the dance, and are taking off their school clothes, given them by the United States government or by charitable persons, and are giving them away.

Off to one side of the dance is a group of perhaps thirty men, who do not seem to care for it, but are engaged in something more substantial. They are gambling. Every dance appears to require a gambling annex. Outside the circle of the actual dancers are large numbers of spectators, both men and women, who sometimes join in, but some are merely spectators.

When night has drawn a veil, then commences a sad scene of debauchery between the sexes. That is one of the principal reasons for having the dance; and that, as well as the gambling annex and other things, is considered to be proper and a legitimate part of the carousal. The dance and the drum are the religion of the heathen Indians. Ask a man what religion he is of, and he will reply that he belongs in the dance.

The next day one will see the household goods violently cast out of a cabin, and will hear sounds of violent quarreling within. The husband and wife were at the dance last night; one was unfaithful, and this is the breaking up of the family. All the young girls get ruined in the excitement of the dance as they grow up. When a Christian man begins to dance, or a farmer, he loses manhood, industry, every manly quality, and speedily goes back to the blanket and the wigwam again.

The fascination of the dance carries them long distances, perhaps a hundred miles, on foot, men and women, to the next Indian village to dance. I have seen the women go from Pine Point to Leech Lake, sixty-five miles, to dance, in the

dead of winter, wading through snow up to their knees, over an unbroken trail that I could not go through with my ponies till they broke the road; yet they carried their children on their backs, and dragged some of them through the snow, packing their blankets and provisions, pots and kettles, and camping out every night. And when they arrived at Leech Lake, they were as proud of jumping higher, or of showing off some new touch in which they thought they excelled, as any belle among us.

The authorities, as in Canada, should long ago have prohibited the heathen dance, as the very antipodes of all civilization and of all progress; instead of that, most of the Indian agents, caring nothing for the Indians, notwithstanding the entreaties of the missionaries, have given it full swing or encouraged it. The winter before the Wounded Knee outbreak, a party of fifty of the worst Sioux came to White Earth Agency, and taught the Ojibways the new "Sioux dance," which caught among them like wildfire. In spite of the remonstrances of the missionaries that they should be sent home, they were furnished with passes to go to every village of the Ojibways, and were fed with government provisions. Yet the Goths and Vandals did not play any more havoc with the civilization of the Roman Empire than those fellows did with everything that the government should do, and that the missionaries were trying to do for them. By the new dances they introduced, the practice of which lived for years and until the present time, they did more harm to the Ojibways than all the money the government expended on them did them good. Later the government ordered all Sioux excluded; but the agents allowed them there just the same, and sometimes encouraged them.

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AGENTS AND SCHOOLS.

In 1872 there was a most admirable Indian agent over the Ojibways, under whom they made progress that was most wonderful, the Rev. E. P. Smith. He surrounded himself with employees who were like himself, and under them the Indians progressed like something growing. But he was promoted to be United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and for a time

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