A VOYAGE AROUND THE ROOM 



tiful things in silk work or bead work gun covers, 

 moccasins, baby bands or baby bags, museum pieces 

 in every sense of the word and beautiful examples 

 of savage handicraft. Once in a while, nowadays, 

 these poor people get a little hand sewing machine, 

 more is the pity, but for the most part their belong- 

 ings are of the scantiest and most meager. The 

 interior of an Indian tent is a jumble of articles of 

 all sorts, but nearly always, underneath the bed, or 

 in some bag, hidden under a pile of meat or hides, 

 you will find some sort of pouch or contrivance in 

 which every savage woman keeps her working tools 

 and her treasures, skeins of silk or the pitiful strings 

 of beads for which they pay so high a price. 



The Indian trunk was the rawhide parfleche, a 

 folded case in which to carry meat or almost any- 

 thing else. I have never seen one of these cases 

 in the moose country of the North, but usually the 

 women up there will have some sort of box or tin, 

 or a buckskin bag, in which they keep their odds 

 and ends. From such a receptacle came this curious 

 object, the use of which you might guess many 

 times before you had it right. It is a roughly orna- 

 mented cylinder of metal, a quarter of an inch in 

 diameter. Through it there plays loosely a buckskin 

 thong which has a copper ball on one end and some 

 beads and seal teeth at the other for ornament. 



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