282 PUBLIC NEWS-CRIERS. 
currents upward from the nozzle. It seems 
looked upon as sacrilege for a person to pass 
before the pipe while the chiefs are smoking ; 
and the heedless or impudent are sometimes 
severely punished for the act. The ‘big talk’ 
follows, and the presents are distributed by a 
chief who exercises the office of commissary. 
But in the petty truces among each other, 
presents are scarcely expected, except they 
be claimed by the more powerful party as a 
matter of tribute. 
Travellers and hunters are generally obliged 
to hold a treaty or ‘big talk’ with every band 
of prairie Indians they may encounter, if they 
wish to maintain friendly relations with them. 
Treaties have also been held, at different pe- 
riods, with most of the wild tribes, by agents 
of the U. 8. Government, yet for the most part 
with but very little effect—they generally for- 
get or disregard them by the time the presents 
they may have received are consumed. 
These treaties, as well as other council de- 
liberations, are generally promulgated by a 
sort of public crier, who proclaims the stipu- 
lations and resolutions from lodge to lodge; 
and the event is preserved in the memory “of 
the sages to future generations.. Among some 
of the tribes their memory is assisted by the 
famous ‘wampum belt, which is a list or belt 
made of wampum beads, so interwoven in 
hieroglyphic figures as to form a record of im- 
portant events. Others preserve the same by 
hieroglyphic paintings on their buffalo rugs 
and the like. 
