INDIANS. 
179 
where the savage expression is usually most strongly marked, was 
small, with a kindly expression about it. Altogether he was a 
strange mixture of the Methodist preacher and the Indian patri- 
arch. His son was much more savage than himself in appear- 
ance — a silent, cold-looking man ; and the grandson, a boy of ten 
or twelve, was one of the mosf uncouth, impish-looking creatures 
we ever beheld. He wore a long-tailed coat twice too large for 
him, with boots of the same size, and he seemed particularly proud 
of these last, looking at them from time to time with great satis- 
faction, as he went tottering along. The child's face was very 
wild, and he was bareheaded, with an unusual quantity of long, 
black hair streaming about his head and shoulders. While the 
grandfather was conversing about old times, the boy diverted 
himself by twirling round on one leg, a feat which would have 
seemed almost impossible, booted as he was, but which he never- 
theless accomplished with remarkable dexterity, spinning round 
and round, his arms extended, his large black eyes staring stu- 
pidly before him, his mouth open, and his long hair flying in every 
direction, as wild a looking creature as one could wish to see. 
We expected every moment that he would fall breathless and 
exhausted, like a dancing dervish, supposing that the child had 
been taught this accomphshment as a means of pleasing his civil- 
ized friends ; but no, he was only amusing himself, and kept his 
footing to the last. 
Some farther acquaintance with the Indians, who still occupy 
lands reserved for them by the government in the western part of 
the State, has only confirmed the impressions produced by these 
first interviews. Ci\ilization, in its earliest approaches, seems to pro- 
duce a different effect upon the men and the women, the former 
