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

air always, and subsisted on flesh almost exclusively, consumption was almost unknown among them. Many reasons for its prevalence now might be given, but one undoubtedly is the spitting over everything by the sick, while closely packed in one small room. The sputa dry, rise as dust, are inhaled by the others, and in that way the sick give this dread disease to the well. Many middle-aged and old persons, who do not have consumption, cough for a great many years; apparently from the irritating effects on the air-passages of the lungs occasioned by drawing such quantities of smoke into them. Yet many such live to a good old age. The mortality in any Indian settlement is many times that in a white community of equal numbers.

The pure-blood Indians are slowly decreasing in number; the mixed-bloods are rapidly increasing. Owing to the great preponderance of men on the frontier, many white men marry Indian and mixed-blood women. As the latter also have each eighty acres of land, and if they remove to White Earth they and all the children will be rationed for years, while the man in addition will get oxen, cows, plows, wagons, sleds, a house, in right of his wife, etc., these things have their influ

ence.

DESTRUCTIVENESS OF INTEMPERANCE.

As is well known, liquor has an attractiveness for the Indians and does destructive work among them; but white men also suffer in that way. Like all races of wild men, the Indians first rapidly and greedily learn the vices of the superior race; and only later, slowly and with extreme difficulty, they acquire their virtues. Thus the excessive use of liquor, the excessive use of tobacco, all such things, they eagerly seize; and therefore necessarily, unless Christianity be taught to counteract such things, unless there be a Christian mission to protect them, the contact with the superior race, and with what is called civilization, is death to the Indian, death physical and moral.

One illustration only I may give. Before the town of Grand Rapids was founded, there lived near its site an unusually progressive band of Indians, called the Rabbit band from a patriarch of that name. They numbered perhaps sixty to

eighty. They had houses, stoves, good gardens and fields, and a great deal of stock, horses and cattle. They made much hay and sold it to the lumbermen, and, for heathen Indians, made great progress and were very comfortable. There came a white man from down the river and planted a saloon about two miles from them. He was the first settler in Grand Rapids, I think. In about two years half of that Rabbit band were dead, and the survivors were wretched shivering vagabonds, while the white man had all their former wealth. Some were frozen to death when drunk; some were drowned by the upsetting of their canoes, when they were drunk; some lay down in the snow and took pneumonia; some were burned to death. The saloon-keeper had all their cattle, horses, stoves, and household goods; and those who remained alive had only an old blanket each.

When the white men reached Leech lake, the town they reared on its banks had one drug store, one hardware store, two dry goods and provision stores, and seven saloons, one of which was capacious enough to contain whisky sufficient to poison all the 1,100 Indians of Leech lake. It was on a high bluff overlooking their lake, accessible from every part of it by their canoes. It was a deadly trap set for the simple natives, right in their midst, by their strong white brother. The civilization of the white man, without the Gospel, is death to the simple Indian.

THE OJIBWAY LANGUAGE.

The children who have been brought up in the schools speak English; but those who have not been so taught, find our language excessively difficult and never learn it. Taking the people generally, Ojibway is almost exclusively their language; but among the mixed-bloods French also is very extensively used.

The Ojibway language is a most beautiful, copious, and expressive one. It is most euphonious; there is not a harsh. or guttural sound in it. All its sounds are perfectly familiar to us, but many of those in our language the Ojibways cannot utter at all. Strange to say, their language is very highly inflected. The Ojibway verb, for instance, is much more highly inflected than the Greek verb; it has whole conjugations of