stationed, both infantry and cavalry, to keep the Indians in check. The Indians are terribly afraid of the Americans, whom they call "the Long Knives," and now the white settlers are no longer in danger. The Indian tribes, spite of the American intervention, continue their bloody and cruel hostilities among themselves. Not long since a number of Sioux warriors surprised a Chippewa village while the men were away on their hunting, and killed and scalped sixteen persons, principally women and children. Governor Ramsay ordered the ringleaders of this attack to be seized and taken to prison. They went with a proud step and the demeanor of martyrs for some noble

cause.

I was extremely curious to see the inside of one of those tepees or wigwams, the smoke and fires of which I had so often seen already; and as we chanced to see, soon after entering the Indian territory, four very respectable Indian huts, I hastened to visit them. Governor Ramsay, and an interpreter whose house was just by, accompanied me. I directed my steps to the largest wigwam; to the opening of which two lean dogs were fastened with cords. The Indians eat their dogs when other food fails. We opened the curtain of hide which represents a door, but instead of the dirt and poverty which I expected to find, I was greatly surprised to see a kind of rude Oriental luxury and splendor.

The fire burned in the middle of the hut, which was large and well covered with buffalo skins. Two men, whose faces were painted with red stripes and devices, sat by the fire carving pipes from a blood-red kind of stone. Round the walls of the hut sat the women and children, upon cushions very showily embroidered, and laid upon white blankets. Some of them were painted with a brilliant red spot in the middle of their cheeks, the parting of their hair being painted red also. They looked really handsome and full of animation, with their

bright black eyes and disheveled hair, thus seen in the light of the flickering fire. Besides this, they were friendly, and seemed amused by my visit. They made room for me to sit down beside them. The old women laughed and chattered, and seemed very much at their ease. The younger ones were more grave and bashful. The men did not look up after their first glance at our entrance, but continued silently to work away at their pipes. A great kettle, suspended by a rope from the poles at the top of the hut, hung over the fire. It was dinner-time A young woman who sat on my right fed her little papoose, which seemed to be about three years old, and which had also a grand red spot on each of its fat round cheeks.

"Hoxidan?" said I, pointing to the child, that word signifying boy.

"Winnona," replied she, in a low, melodious voice, that word signifying girl.

And with that my stock of Indian words was exhausted. I requested by signs to taste the soup of which she and the child were eating, and she cheerfully handed to me her bowl and spoon. It was a kind of thin soup, in which beans were boiled, without salt, and without the slightest flavor which I could perceive. She then offered me a cake which was just baked, of a golden brown, and which looked quite delicious. It was, I believe, made of wheaten flour, and without salt also, but very excellent nevertheless.

The interpreter was gone out. Gov. Ramsay had also seated himself. The Indians filed on at their pipes; the flames flickered merrily; the kettle boiled; the women ate or looked at me, half reclining or sitting carelessly by the fire-light. And I-looked at them. With inward wonder I regarded these beings, women like myself, with the spirit and the feelings of women, yet so unlike myself in their purpose of life, in daily life, in the whole of their world'

I thought of hard, gray, domestic life, in the civilized world, a home without love, hedged in by conventional opinion, with social duties, the duty of seeking for the daughters of the family suitable husbands, otherwise they would never leave the family; and with every prospect of independence, liberty, activity, joy closed, more rigidly closed by invisible barriers, than these wigwams by their buffalo hides; a Northern domestic life-such an one as exists in a vast number of Northern homes-and I thought that that Indian hut and that Indian woman's life was better, happier as earthly life.

Thus had I thought in the gas-lighted drawing-rooms of New York and Boston, in the heat and the labor of being polite or agreeable; of conversation and congratulation; of endeavoring to look well, to please and to be pleased, and—I thought that the wigwam of an Indian was a better and a happier world than that of the drawing-room. There they sat at their ease, without stays, or the anxiety to charm, without constraint or effort, those daughters of the forest! They knew not the fret and the disquiet, the ennui and the fatigue, which is the consequence of a brief hour's social worry; they knew not the disgust and the bitterness which is produced by little things, little vexations, which one is ashamed to feel, but which one must feel nevertheless. Their world might be monotonous, but in comparison it was calm and fresh within the narrow wigwam, while without there was free space, and the rustling forest open to them with all its fresh winds and odors. Ah!

But again I bethought myself of the Indian womenbethought me of their life and condition; with no other purpose and no other prospect in life than to serve a husband whom they have seldom chosen themselves, who merely regards them as servants, or as a cock regards the hens around him. I saw the wife and the mother humiliated by the entrance of the new wife into the husband's

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dwelling, and his affection being turned to the stranger in her sight, and in the same home, and in the fire-light of that same hearth which had been kindled on her marriage day, saw her despised or neglected by the man who constituted her whole world. Ah! the wigwam, the free space of the forest, had no longer peace or breathing room for the anguish of such a condition; alleviation of its agony or its misery is found merely in degradation or death. Winnona's death-song on the rock by Lake Pepin; Ampato Sapa's death-song on the waters of the Mississippi, when she and her children sought for the peace of forgetfulness in their foaming depths; and many other of their sisters, who yet to this day prefer death to life, all testify how deeply tragical is the fate of the Indian woman.

And again I bethought myself of love-warmed homes in the cultivated world, in the North as well as in the South; homes such as are frequent, and which become still more and more so among a free and Christian people, where the noble woman is the noble man's equal in every thing, in pleasure and in need; where good parents prepare even the daughters of the house for a life of independent activity and happiness, for the possession of a world, an object which is beyond the circumscribed boundary of the dwelling-house, no longer a buffalo-hide-enveloped wigwam. I bethought me of her right, and the possibility of her acquiring a sphere of action in the intellectual world which would make the torments of civilized life, whether small or great, seem like cloudlets in a heaven otherwise bright; bethought me of my own Swedish home, of my good mother, my quiet room, my peace and freedom there, as on the maternal bosom, with space and view limitless as infinity. And I thanked God for my lot!

But these poor women here! Three families resided in this wigwam; there were only three husbands, but there were certainly twelve or thirteen women. How many bitter, jealous feelings must burn in many a bosom as

sembled here, day and night, around the same fire, partaking of the same meal, and with the same object in life!

I visited the other wigwams also. Each one presented the same scene with but little variation. Two or three men by the fire, several women sitting or lying upon blankets or embroidered cushions round the walls of the hut, and occupied with nothing for the moment. The men carved red-stone pipes, which they sell to the whites at very high prices; the work, however, in this hard stone is not easy. This red stone is obtained from quarries situated far up the Missouri. I can not but admire the hands of these men; they are remarkably beautiful and well formed, and are evidently, even as regards the nails, kept with great care; they are delicate and slender, resembling rather the hands of women than men.

I saw in one wigwam a young woman, who, as she sat with her rich, unbound hair falling over her shoulders, seemed to me so unusually handsome that I wished to make a sketch of her. I also wished to take the portraits of a couple of Indians, and requested Governor Ramsay to prefer my request. He therefore, by means of the interpreter, Mr. Prescott, stated to an old chief named Mozah-hotah (Gray Iron) that I wished to take the likenesses of all great men in this country, to show to the people on the other side of the great water, and therefore that I requested him to sit to me a short time for that purpose.

The old chief, who is said to be a good and respectable man, looked very grave, listened to the proposal attentively, and gave a sort of grunting assent. He then accompanied us to the house of the interpreter, from the doors and windows of which peeped forth many little faces with their Indian features and complexion, for Mr. Prescott has an Indian wife, and many children by her.

I was soon seated in the house with the old chief before me, who expressed some annoyance because he was not in grand attiré, having merely a couple of eagle's feath