39

nearly as good a that of young that few persons can tell the difference. This is the true Indian bread, and is used as bread when they have fresh meat. Boiled, it makes a soup very nutritious. So long as the Indian has this dried meat and pemmican he is entirely independent of all other food. Of late years, all the beef issued to the Indians no reservations, and not needed for immediate consumption, is treated in this way.

The dressing of skins is the next work. The thickest hides are put in soak of alkali, for materials for making shields, saddles, riatas, etc. Hides for making or repairing lodges are treated in the same way but, after the hair has been removed, they are reduced in thickness, made pliable, and most frequently soaked.

Deer, antelope, and other thin skins are beautifully prepared for clothing, the hair being always removed. Some of these skins are so worked down that they are almost as thin and white as cotton cloth.

But the crowning process is the preparation of a buffalo robe. The skin of even the youngest and fattest cow is in its natural condition, much too thick for use, being unwieldy and lacking pliability. This thickness must be reduced at least one-half, and the skin at the same time made soft and pliable. When the stretched skin has become dry and hard from the action of the sun, the woman goes to work upon it with a small implement, shaped somewhat like a carpenter's adze. It has a short handle of wood or elk-horn, tied on with rawhide, and is used with one hand. These tools are heir-looms in families, and greatly prized. It is exceedingly difficult to obtain one, especially one with an elk-horn handle, the Indians valuing them above price. With this tool the woman chips at the hardest skin, cutting off a thin shaving at every blow. The skill in the whole process consists in so directing and tempering the blows as to cut the skin, yet not cut too deep, and in finally obtaining a uniform thickness and perfectly smooth and even inner surface. To render the skin soft and pliable, the chipping is stopped every little while, and the chipped surface smeared with brains of buffalo, which are thoroughly rubbed in with a smooth stone.

When very great care and delicacy are required, the skin is stretched vertically on a frame of poles. It is claimed that the chipping process can be much more perfectly performed on a skin stretched in this way than on one stretched on the uneven and unyielding ground, but the latter is used for all common robes, because it is the easiest.

When thinning and softening process is completed the robe is taken out of its frame, trimmed, and sometimes smoked. It is now ready for use. It is a long and tedious process, and no one but an Indian would go through it.

But all this, though harder work, is the mere commencement of the long and patient labor which the loving wife bestows on the robe which the husband is to use on dress occasions. The whole inner surface is frequently covered with designs beautifully worked with porcupine quills, or grasses dyed in various colors. Sometimes the embellishments are paintings. Many elegant robes have taken a year to finish.

Every animal brought into the camp brings work for the squaw. The buck comes in with a deer and drops it at the door. The squaw skins it, cuts up and preserves the meat, dresses the skin and fashions it into garments for some member of the family. Until within a very few years the needle was a piece of sharpened bone; the thread a fibre of sinew. These are yet used in the ornamentation of robes, but almost all the ordinary sewing is done with civilized appliances.

All Indians are excessively fond of bead-work, and not only the clothing, moccasins, gun-covers, quivers, knife sheaths, and tobacco pouches, but every little bag or ornament is convered with this work. Many of the designs are pretty and artistic. In stringing the beads for this work an ordinary needle is used; but in every case, except for articles made for sale, the thread used is sinew.

Only a few years ago the foregoing description of the ordinary employments of Indians was true to the letter for almost every tribe west of the Missouri and east of the Rocky Mountains. It is yet true for momst of them, but some few have taken, within these few years, long steps on the "white man's road," and the occupations of both men and women of those tribes will not conform to this description.

nearly as good a that of young that few persons can tell the difference. This is the true Indian bread, and is used as bread when they have fresh meat. Boiled, it makes a soup very nutritious. So long as the Indian has this dried meat and pemmican he is entirely independent of all other food. Of late years, all the beef issued to the Indians no reservations, and not needed for immediate consumption, is treated in this way.

The dressing of skins is the next work. The thickest hides are put in soak of alkali, for materials for making shields, saddles, riatas, etc. Hides for making or repairing lodges are treated in the same way but, after the hair has been removed, they are reduced in thickness, made pliable, and most frequently soaked.

Deer, antelope, and other thin skins are beautifully prepared for clothing, the hair being always removed. Some of these skins are so worked down that they are almost as thin and white as cotton cloth.

But the crowning process is the preparation of a buffalo robe. The skin of even the youngest and fattest cow is in its natural condition, much too thick for use, being unwieldy and lacking pliability. This thickness must be reduced at least one-half, and the skin at the same time made soft and pliable. When the stretched skin has become dry and hard from the action of the sun, the woman goes to work upon it with a small implement, shaped somewhat like a carpenter's adze. It has a short handle of wood or elk-horn, tied on with rawhide, and is used with one hand. These tools are heir-looms in families, and greatly prized. It is exceedingly difficult to obtain one, especially one with an elk-horn handle, the Indians valuing them above price. With this tool the woman chips at the hardest skin, cutting off a thin shaving at every blow. The skill in the whole process consists in so directing and tempering the blows as to cut the skin, yet not cut too deep, and in finally obtaining a uniform thickness and perfectly smooth and even inner surface. To render the skin soft and pliable, the chipping is stopped every little while, and the chipped surface smeared with brains of buffalo, which are thoroughly rubbed in with a smooth stone.

When very great care and delicacy are required, the skin is stretched vertically on a frame of poles. It is claimed that the chipping process can be much more perfectly performed on a skin stretched in this way than on one stretched on the uneven and unyielding ground, but the latter is used for all common robes, because it is the easiest.

When thinning and softening process is completed the robe is taken out of its frame, trimmed, and sometimes smoked. It is now ready for use. It is a long and tedious process, and no one but an Indian would go through it.

But all this, though harder work, is the mere commencement of the long and patient labor which the loving wife bestows on the robe which the husband is to use on dress occasions. The whole inner surface is frequently covered with designs beautifully worked with porcupine quills, or grasses dyed in various colors. Sometimes the embellishments are paintings. Many elegant robes have taken a year to finish.