MONAECHS IN EXILE 79 



scenes of the affair as if it had been a battle between 

 tribes, and the women came in, skinned the animals, 

 cut up the meat, packed it on their wheel-less dogr-carts, 

 and took it to camp." 



"How can there possibly be a cart without wheels? 

 It would only be a box that would bump and spill," 

 said Dodo, who had kept quiet an unusually long time 

 for her. 



"This Indian cart, as wheel-less as the Eskimo 

 sledge, is called a travois, and is still in use among the 

 scattered tribes, except that now it is dragged by 

 horses. Can you imagine how it was made ? " 



" Oh, I know what it is ; we saw it at the Wild 

 West Show ! Don't you remember ? " shouted Nat. 

 " The thing like a pair of cross-legged shafts fastened 

 to the horse's back, with the big ends trailing on the 

 ground, and braces across right behind the horse's 

 back knees, to keep it together and make a place to 

 hold things!" 



" Yes, that was a travois, and it is possible to drag 

 it over ground that would quickly break cart wheels. 

 Some time after, when the civilized races or House 

 People came to America and settled along the coasts, 

 the horse found its way among the Indians. He came 

 with the Spanish through Mexico in the South, and 

 from the Canadian French in the North. Soon an 

 Indian's wealth began to be measured by horses, as 

 we measure ours by dollars. Indians mounted on 

 half-breed horses followed the Buffalo over the plains, 

 with greater success, for, as the old range of these 

 animals in the East and South was being peopled 

 and cultivated, the Buffalo crowded westward, as the 



