MALLERY.] SMOKE SIGNALS. 537 
commonly raised by firing spots of dry grass.” (Josiah Gregg’s Com- 
merce of the Prairies. New York, 1844, vol. ii, p. 286.) 
The highest elevations of land are selected as stations from which 
signals with smoke are made. These can be seen at a distance of from 
twenty to fifty miles. By varying the number of columns of smoke dif- 
ferent meanings are conveyed. The most simple as well as the most 
varied mode, and resembling the telegraphic alphabet, is arranged by 
building a small fire, which is not allowed to blaze; then by placing an 
armful of partially green grass or weeds over the fire, as if to smother 
it, a dense white smoke is created, which ordinarily will ascend in a con- 
tinuous vertical column for hundreds of feet. Having established a cur- 
rent of smoke, the Indian simply takes his blanket and by spreading it 
over the small pile of weeds or grass from which the smoke takes its 
source, and properly controlling the edges and corners of the blanket, 
he confines the smoke, and is in this way able to retain it for several 
moments. By rapidly displacing the blanket, the operator is enabled 
to cause a dense volume of smoke to rise, the length or shortness of 
which, as well as the number and frequency of the columns, he can reg- 
ulate perfectly, simply by a proper use of the blanket. (Custer’s My 
Tafe on the Plains, loc. cit., p. 187.) 
They gathered an armful of dried grass and weeds, which were placed 
and carried upon the highest point of the peak, where, everything being 
in readiness, the match was applied close tothe ground; but the blaze was 
no sooner well lighted and about to envelop the entire amount of grass 
collected than it was smothered with the unlighted portion. A slender 
column of gray smoke then began to ascend in a perpendicular column. 
This was not enough, as it might be taken for the smoke rising from a 
simple camp-fire. The smoldering grass was then covered with a hlanket, 
the corners of which were held so closely to the ground as to almost 
completely confine and cut off the column of smoke. Waiting a few mo- 
ments, until the smoke was beginning to escape from beneath, the blanket 
was suddenly thrown aside, when a beautiful balloon-shaped column 
puffed upward like the white cloud of smoke which attends the discharge 
of a field-piece. Again casting the blanket on the pile of grass, the 
column was interrupted as before, and again in due time released, so that 
a succession of elongated, egg-shaped puffs of smoke kept ascending 
toward the sky in the most regular manner. This bead-like column of 
smoke, considering the height from which it began to ascend, was visi- 
ble from points on the level plain fifty miles distant. (Zb., p. 217.) 
The following extracts are made from Fremont’s First and Second Ex- 
peditions, 1842-3-4, Ex. Doc., 28th Cong. 2d Session, Senate, Washing- 
ton, 1845: 
‘*Columns of smoke rose over the country at scattered intervals—sig- 
nals by which the Indians here, as elsewhere, communicate to each other 
that enemies are in the country,” p. 220. This was January 18, 1844, in 
the vicinity of Pyramid Lake, and perhaps the signalists were Pai-Utes. 
