LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 21 



visible. Here he lay, still as a carcagien in wait for a 

 deer, only now and then shaking the boughs as his body 

 quivered with a suppressed chuckle, when any movement 

 in the Indian camp caused him to laugh inwardly at his 

 (if they had known it) unwelcome propinquity. He was 

 not a little surprised, however, to discover that the party 

 was much smaller than he had imagined, counting only 

 forty warriors ; and this assured him that the band had 

 divided, one half taking the Yuta trail by the Boiling 

 Spring, the other (the one before him) taking a longer 

 circuit in order to reach the Bayou, and make the attack 

 on the Yutas, in a different direction. 



At this moment the Indians were in deliberation. Seated 

 in a large circle round a very small fire,* the smoke from 

 which ascended in a thin straight column, they each in 

 turn puffed a huge cloud of smoke from three or four long 

 cherry-stemmed pipes, which went the round of the party ; 

 each warrior touching the ground with the heel of the 

 pipe-bowl, and turning the stem upwards and away from 

 him as " medicine " to the Great Spirit, before he himself 

 inhaled the fragrant kinnik-kinnik. The council, however, 

 was not general, for only fifteen of the older warriors took 

 part in it, the others sitting outside, and at some little 

 distance from the circle. Behind each were his arms 

 bow and quiver, and shield hanging from a spear stuck 

 in the ground ; and a few guns in ornamented covers of 

 buckskin were added to some of the equipments. 



Near the fire, and in the centre of the inner circle, a 

 spear was fixed upright in the ground, and on this dangled 

 the four scalps of the trappers killed the preceding night ; 

 and underneath them, affixed to the same spear, was the 

 mystic " medicine-bag," by which Killbuck knew that the 

 band before him was under the command of the chief of 

 the tribe. 



* There is a great difference between an Indian's fire and a 

 white's. The former places the ends of logs to burn gradually ; 

 the latter, the centre, besides making such a bonfire that the 

 Indians truly say, " The white makes a fire so hot that he cannot 

 approach to warm himself by it." 



