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

potatoes. The rest of his time, when not hunting, is spent in gambling; or in lying on his mat in the house or wigwam, gossiping; or in visiting other wigwams or bands of Indians; or, for some part, in dancing. He also spends a good deal of time in drumming and singing. The woman is the bread-winner of the family.

OJIBWAY GAMBLING; FEASTS AND COUNCILS; HIS IDEAL.

He does not think gambling any harm; he has been used to it all his life. If in winter, it is done in his wigwam or house, where he is warm; if in summer, out of doors. A blanket is spread, beside which from one to three drummers, holding aloft small drums in their hands, keep drumming and singing the gambling chant or song while the game goes on. Usually, when approaching a village, one can hear the gambling drums at a long distance; and coming nearer he finds the men collected in a group, the gamblers, who may be six or eight in number, hard at their business, and the rest of the men interested spectators around them. As fast as the drummers are exhausted with the continual high-pitched singing, others are substituted for them. They do not seem to be able to gamble well without the drumming and singing. The women of the village are all quietly going about their work, but no man is doing anything; they have all been attracted by the game. The gamblers often seem to have a kind of fit on when engaged in it; their bodies seem to be disjointed, and each particular limb to be shaking a shake of its own. The game often lasts three days, and till it is finished they hardly take time to eat or sleep. The stakes are anything a man has, his gun, his blanket, his coat. I have sometimes seen a man go through the winter in his shirt sleeves, who had gambled away his coat. One man took off and gambled away his only pair of pants. It is usually done in their own way, the bullet and moccasin game; but some use cards. The little boys begin at a very early age, and sometimes the women gamble in their houses or in the street; but the women are not nearly such incessant gamblers as the men.

Sometimes the heathen Ojibway goes through a performance manifesting forth to himself and to others that he is a

god, that he has supernatural powers. He sits down outside, collects all the movable articles around him, and keeps them flying into the air, tossing them about and all around in every conceivable manner. His admiration of himself grows as he witnesses his miraculous performances until he comes to look on himself as indeed a god.

In every Indian village there is always something going on. Some are striving for superiority, just as it is among ourselves; and others are trying to pull them down. Every day the men meet to discuss matters; there is continual counciling. One of our Indian clergymen who lived at Red lake twelve years said that never once in that time did there cease to be something going on, that took up their attention. Often when sitting in the wigwam one will see the blanket door pulled aside for a moment, a face appears, and "You are invited to a feast" is said to the good man of the house. He thereupon rises, picks up a wooden mug and spoon, and goes. The feast consists probably of whole boiled corn, and perhaps. fish, of which the guest gets a mugfull; but there is something to be talked about that seems vitally important to them. Of late years electing some of their number to go to Washington about their affairs takes months of counciling, and keeps their minds continually on the stretch.

Then sometimes it takes the man many hours in a day to paint his face properly for the dance, and to oil his hair and arrange his head-dress of feathers. So his time is very fully occupied. In summer he goes off a hundred miles or more to visit another band of Chippewas; or he goes to visit the Sioux two or three hundred miles away, and is gone most of the summer. So his time slips away, and he effects nothing.

The conception of life by the Ojibway and by the white man is fundamentally different. The white man's thought is to do something, to achieve something; the Indian's is that life is one long holiday. He has no wish for any improvement, nor to live differently; he just wishes to take his ease and enjoy himself. He sees the white lumberman, for instance, out two miles from his logging camp, waiting for daylight to begin work; sees him toiling all day, "dinnering out," and going home tired, in the dark, to his logging camp. The Ojibway thinks he has a far better way, he has been lying in his