358 INDIANS. 



form while green. When it becomes dry it retains its 

 shape, and is almost as hard as iron. 



Making a robe is a much more difficult process. The 

 skin in its natural condition is 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. When the stretched skin has be- 

 come dry and hard from the action of the sun, the woman 

 goes to work upon it with a small iron instrument shaped 

 somewhat like a carpenter's adze. It has a short handle 

 of wood or elk horn tied on with raw hide, and can be 

 used with one hand. These tools are heirlooms in families, 

 and are greatly prized, more especially those with 

 elk horn handles. With this she chips at the hard skin, 

 cutting off a thin shaving at each blow. The skill of this 

 process is in so directing and tempering the blows as to 

 cut the skin, yet not cut through it, and in finally ob- 

 taining a perfectly smooth arid even inner surface and 

 uniform thickness. To render the skin soft and pliable, 

 every little while the chipping is stopped, and the chipped 

 surface smeared with fat and brains of buffalo, which are 

 thoroughly rubbed in with a smooth stone. It is a long 

 and tedious process, and none but an Indian would go 

 through it. Hides for making lodges have the hair 

 taken off, are reduced in thickness, and made pliable. 

 Deer, antelope, and other thin skins are beautifully pre- 

 pared for clothing, the hair being always removed. 



Thus there are four different processes in the prepa- 

 ration of skins, each admirably adapted to the use to 

 which the prepared skin is to be put. 



In none of the plains tribes is there the slightest 

 knowledge of traps and trapping. Their invention seems 

 to have stopped short of even the simplest contrivance 

 for catching game, either animals or birds. I have heard 

 of their stealing the traps of a white trapper; but the 

 first time a bungler gets his lingers caught in its jaws, the 

 trap is thrown away as ' bad medicine/ 



