ASSINIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN INDIANS. 261 



ishment, were revealed the huge proportions of Short-stick's fourth, 

 youngest and best wife. She shook a mass of hair from her head 

 and joined in the laughter at my discomfiture. Other Indians hearing 

 the noise came in, and Short-stick, with tears in his eyes, told his 

 friends how "the white stranger had sat upon his best wife, thinking 

 she was a pile of robes, and hovt^ she tossed him into the middle of the 

 tent like a buffalo bull pitching a colt." 



As I passed near the door of the tent belonging to Short- stick's 

 eldest son, who accompanied me, a young squaw outside was leaning 

 upon sticks, evidently in great trouble and weeping bitterly; the 

 moment she saw us she hobbled into the tent with a low cry of pain 

 and closed the entrance. I asked the interpreter what this meant. 

 After some conversation with her husband, he said that the woman 

 was suffering from a beating he had given her for a violation of her 

 faith during his absence in the spring on a war excursion. " I would 

 have killed her" muttered the husband, " but I thought it a pity to 

 kill two at once. She had her choice whether she would have her hair, 

 her nose or her ear cut off, or whether she would have a beating ; she 

 chose what she has got, and I would have killed her had I not known 

 I should regret having killed both." It is needless to add that the 

 woman soon expected to become a mother. 



In order to understand the character and nature of wild Indians, 

 they must be seen in their tents when well supplied with provisions, 

 and disposed to be cheerful and merry. In the prairies, on horseback, 

 they are often quiet and watchful, always on the look out, and if 

 twenty or thirty are in a band they generally manage to see a suspici- 

 ous object in the distance at the same moment, so that a simultaneous 

 note of exclamation is uttered by most or all of the party. In hunting 

 the buffalo they are wild with excitement, but no scene or incident 

 seems to have such a maddening effect upon them as when the buffalo 

 are successfully driven into a pound. Until the herd is brought in by 

 the skilled hunters all is silence around the fence of the pound, each 

 man, woman and child holding, with pent up feelings, his robe so as 

 to close every orifice through which the terrified animals might endea- 

 vour to effect an escape. The herd once in the pound the scene of 

 diabolical butchery and excitement begins ; men, women and children 

 climb on the fence and shoot their arrows or thrust their spears at the 

 bewildered buffalo, with shouts, screams and yells horrible to heajc^ 

 But when the young men, and even women jump into the areaa 



