motion in walking the men far surpass our race; there is no swinging of the arms, or other awkward motions, but grace and a beautiful poise and carriage of the body.

As is well known, they have abundant thick and strong hair. I can only recall about two Indians of the whole Ojibway nation who are bald, and they only partially so. Nor does their hair early turn gray, as often with us; this change comes only in extreme old age. When approaching the age of eighty years, an Ojibway's hair turns gray, but not much before. Often at the age of seventy-five, their hair is as black and thick as at twenty. Their hair never turns quite white, so far as I can remember.

The Ojibway man has usually beautiful, white, even teeth, till far past middle age, although he never cleans them and takes no care of them whatever. The voice is usually high pitched and resonant; the eye black and liquid. The man does not usually get stout as he grows old; he rather, if anything, dries up. It is rare to see a fat Indian man, except when it has been caused by excessive drinking. Their leanness, as they grow older, has been accounted for, in my mind, by their incessant spitting from their great use of tobacco, and by the spare diet to which they are usually condemned.

The women are in many respects a great contrast to the men. Instead of the beautiful springing step, they trudge along with a heavy, plodding tread, devoid of all beauty of motion. They have not a particle of the grace in motion of their white sisters. Their heavy gait I have accounted for in my own mind by the heavy packs and burdens which for generations they have had to bear. Many of the women have packed, all their lives, burdens of two hundred pounds. With this continued for centuries, it is no wonder that their step is heavy. The Ojibway man, in his native state, rarely carries any pack, if there be a woman along to do it, unless there is so much that both must pack. He puts it upon the woman, while he strides along in front, magnificently, with his gun. Both parties seem to look on that as natural and proper. Sometimes when a man marries a young woman, he puts his own pack on her in addition to her own and soon breaks her down. In this, as in nearly all here written, I am speaking

of the heathen Indian; for when they become Christians, they view things in a very different light, and their practice approaches our own. The woman always walks behind, never by the side of a man. Often on the top of her enormous pack, if the articles be bulky, as when moving her wigwam, etc., from place to place, one can see the baby perched high above her head, securely tied to keep it from falling from its perilous height. On a journey the woman packs the birch bark for the wigwam, the rush mats to sleep on, the cooking utensils, the food. Sometimes I have seen the woman invert the heavy canoe, weighing 80 or 100 pounds, over her head, and carry it for miles and miles over all portages, while her husband took the light traps. The women generally have very large waists. In middle life they are usually quite stout and fleshy, and I think would average more in weight than the men. They seem to be just as expert with the axe, and as strong for all kinds of labor.

At Red Lake the women especially, but also the men, are, for some reason unknown to me, exceedingly tall. The Red Lake Indians are by far taller than the other Ojibways, which is the more remarkable as they have not lived at Red Lake very long. Many of the men there are 6 feet 4 inches in stature. I have known some so tall as 6 feet 8 inches. I know considerable numbers of old women there who must be about 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall. It would be interesting to know what there is in the soil, water, or food, which has so soon produced such a tall race.

INFREQUENCE OF INSANITY.

It is strange that, considering the hardships of their lives, insanity is extremely rare among the Ojibways. Only once, along in the 70's or 80's, during an Indian payment at Mille Lacs, when many hundreds were collected, did I see an Indian who seemed to be insane, and he not very violent. A crowd of young men and boys were around him, teasing and mocking him, and he was striking at them. That is the only crazy man I happened to see, or to know of. A young mixed-blood man from White Earth, nearly white, was in an insane asylum for some time; also a woman from Leech lake was under such care for a time. Also a middle-aged man wandered off into the

woods in a semi-demented state and died. I have known only two feeble-minded or idiotic, one a young man of twenty-three years, whose idiocy was caused before his birth by his mother's seeing for the first time a railroad train, which rushed out at her from a cut on the Northern Pacific railroad. She fell in a dead faint and lay thus for some time, and her son is an idiot. It is also a matter of thankfulness that, considering the hardships, suicide is extremely rare. There has been only one case in twenty-five years, this being an elderly woman who hung herself at the gate in front of her door, after a family quarrel.

CHANGES DURING THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.

It may be interesting to compare a first look at the Ojibways with what one sees to-day. It was in 1873 on the White Earth reservation. Many of the Indians then dressed in the old Indian garb of blankets, cotton leggings, and moccasins. Now there are only a few old men who are so dressed, though all who can get them still prefer the moccasins. The White Earth Indians were then rapidly rising in all respects, under the influence of the mission and the admirable management of the agent, E. P. Smith. There was a little church well attended; but old Indian habits, as might be expected, were still strong. Sometimes they would go from the church, at the conclusion of service, to the Indian dance which was in full blast not far from the church door with all its drumming, whooping, and jumping up and down. There was thus the mixture of Christianity and heathenism which might be expected.

That winter there came from Red lake, where they were all at that time wild men, about sixty old grand medicine men, in January, when the thermometer was about forty degrees below zero, bringing the big medicine drum with them, and sleeping out about four times on the way, 80 or 90 miles. Their coming created a greater sensation than would that of Paderewski to your city. The big drum was brought out, with all the old fellows from Red lake singing around it so loud that their voices could be heard, it would seem, for miles; and soon most of the inhabitants of White Earth, discarding the garments of civilization which they had lately put on, and

painting themselves once more as wild men, were whooping and dancing around the drum, telling stories about the Sioux they had scalped, and having a veritable orgy which made night and day hideous for weeks. Thus the infant Christianity and the infant civilization of the place seemed for the time to be swallowed up and lost. The old Red Lake medicine men ate so many dogs in continual medicine feasts, that, as Paul Beaulieu wittily said, they went home barking.

In the fall of 1873 I first saw the Leech Lake Indians. It was annual payment time, and there were perhaps a thousand or more assembled in the public square. They were all, so far as I can remember, wild blanket Indians, with faces painted, long scalp locks, and feathers; they were wrapped in blankets of green, white, blue, red, and all colors. It was a cold October day, the wind blowing and some snow flying, so that we felt the cold in thick overcoats; and I was surprised to see great numbers of little children, running around everywhere, entirely naked, or some of them with only a thin cotton shirt flying loose in the bitter wind, affording really no protection at all. Now, most of the Leech Lake Indians wear citizens' clothes.

In 1876 I first saw the Red Lake Indians. On all the large stones about their village there were offerings of tobacco, laid there for the gods who were supposed by them to inhabit those rocks. They lived in bark wigwams, and there were many fields of corn. They were all wild blanket Indians, fantastically painted. We had gone to speak to them about founding a mission, and had taken along with us some Christian Indians from White Earth who were considered the very best speakers, to speak to them on the subject. Besides we had a present of some sacks of flour, some pork, and tea, to dispose them to a favorable hearing. They filed in, dressed in gay colored blankets, and with all their Indian paint and bravery. They eagerly seized the present of provisions and carried it off; but, as often happens, they cared nothing for the eloquence we had brought them, and indeed would not listen to it. When they had got the provisions, they wanted nothing more. Now, among the 1,200 Red Lake Indians there are few blankets to be seen, and most of the scalp-locks have been cut off.

An intelligent American employee, who lived among them about ten years before that time and had married one of their women, told me that when he was there they had a custom, both men and women, of plastering their naked backs in the summer time all over with white clay, which dried and hardened and adhered to the skin, and that upon the clay they painted all kinds of curious figures, so that it looked very strange to see them stalking around all summer with those painted figures on their backs. That was about thirty years ago; now they are mostly dressed like other people, the change in that, as in other respects, having been rapid.

HOME LIFE IN THE WIGWAM.

In 1873 nearly all the Ojibways everywhere, except the few newly removed to White Earth, lived winter and summer in birch bark wigwams. Now, nearly all of them have built for themselves, or have had built for them by the United States government, one-roomed log cabins, in which they winter; but, in front of these, nearly every family puts up in summer an old style birch bark wigwam, in which they pass the summer, returning to the log house when the cold weather sets in. They properly prefer the wigwam for its greater coolness, better circulation of air and greater cleanness. There are still, however, some families who from preference winter in birch bark wigwams. That would be to us a life of extreme and intolerable suffering from cold. The strips of birch bark are laid loosely on, and there are great chinks everywhere through which one can put his hand, and there is the open top. The family sit round the fire in a circle, on rush mats made by the women from rushes which grow in the lakes; and as long as the fire is kept up one's face is warm while facing the fire, but, if it be cold weather, one's back, opposite the open chinks, is never comfortably warm. It would seem that it is only because they have become so used to suffering extreme cold in these wigwams, through so many centuries, that they ever survive a winter. They do not complain of it, however, and do not seem to mind it. It is certain that from long habit and from heredity they can endure a degree of cold that to us would be intolerable.

On approaching a wigwam, the custom is to raise the blanket which hangs over the doorway and go in without asking