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

be the great sugar-making place, make 2,000 pounds each. At Red lake and White Earth they would not average over 500 pounds a family. It is hard, exhausting work, owing to the antiquated methods they use, of deep pots and kettles instead of evaporators. No explanation can induce them to adopt the latter. Their moccasins, feet, and lower limbs, are sopping wet in the melting snows in the woods for a month or six weeks; and they sleep so, being wet all the time, night and day. They are very busy carrying sap in pails, chopping wood, and keeping up fires all night long. The exposure, poor food, and exhausting work, are a great strain on their constitutions, and a good many die every year. Especially those children who have been kept warm in schoolhouses all winter, catch colds from being continually wet and sleeping wet, and go off into quick consumption. I knew that a man who did chores for me had not had off his wet moccasins nor his feet dry once for six weeks, night or day, in spring. It seemed to do him. no harm, but would have killed any white man.

While the women are making maple sugar, the men go off fifty or a hundred miles to trap muskrats and other small animals. Very often they bring back about one hundred dollars' worth of furs apiece in a month's time. Then they are with their women for some time at the end of sugar-making. Then planting whatever potatoes they plant, and later corn, comes on. Then after an interval, the strawberries are ripe, and successively later the raspberries and blueberries. Next is the taking of birch bark from the trees, for wigwams and to make canoes; then hoeing the gardens; then pulling rushes from the lakes to make mats; then making canoes; then gathering wild rice, and afterward cranberries. All these imply journeys to the places where these happen to abound, as twenty or perhaps fifty miles and back. The exact succession of these events I cannot recall, but each has its own particular time; and, taken together, they occupy the entire year until cold weather. When one family starts for the particular berry that is ripe just then, or for the particular thing that should be done, that starts off all the others, as no one wishes to be left behind. This is heathen life; when they become Christians and farmers, this continual wandering life becomes modified to a certain extent.

When the cold weather begins in November each family usually starts off ten or twenty miles for a prolonged hunt. They stay out usually till January 1st, when the severe weather drives them home to their winter quarters. Very often a family claims a certain spot as their hunting ground, and they go to it year after year, and it is understood that no other family is to intrude on their territory. Of course they take the children and everything with them; and during that time they always live in birch bark wigwams. They kill deer, bear, moose, and many other animals, and live high, and make a great deal of money out of furs.

Captain Wallace, who was killed at Wounded Knee, made an investigation of the Mille Lacs Indians, and found that from all sources, furs, wild rice, venison, etc., the Indians of Mille Lacs got hold of a great deal more money in the course of a year than the average white farmer. The same is doubtless true of all the Indians. In the course of a year they have up to this time, from various sources, got hold of a great deal of money. It is a mistake to try to force them to be farmers only, as our government has heretofore seemed to try to do. Farming is too hard work, and means too long waiting for returns. They like very much better something which brings quick returns, as they had in their old life.

FREQUENT SCARCITY OF FOOD IN WINTER.

From January 1st till the crows come, about March 20th, the Indian remains quiet in his log house, in his village, to which he has returned, with nothing particular to do. Then, if at all, especially towards spring, is his starving time. The snow is deep, there is no game to be got, the produce of the little fields has been eaten up, also the wild rice and the flesh that was brought from the hunt. If pains have not been taken to lay in an ample stock of frozen fish in November, there is apt to be hunger; for it is very hard or impossible to take fish now under the great depth of snow and ice. The wife of one of our Indian clerygmen told me that oftentimes in the village where they were missionaries, Cass Lake, no one had anything to eat but themselves, sometimes for three days at a time. This of course was owing to their own improvidence, for a very few days' labor would have raised all the corn and po