342 

sometimes dyed in different colors. This was 
applied with a fine sinew thread. 
In later times it was not unusual to see the 
flesh side of the robe ornamented with beads 
of various colors, applied with sinew. 
The ornamentation already described was all 
of it done by women; but in old times robes 
ornamented with pictographs of various kinds 
were common. The paintings were made by 
men, sometimes by old men, representing the 
more startling events of their lives, and some- 
times by young men, who acted as artists under 
the instruction of the old men whose deeds 
they were recording. Such_ pictographs 
might represent fights in which the man 
whose deeds were represented had been suc- 
cessful; perhaps he had struck, or ridden down 
an enemy, or had killed-a grizzly bear, or had 
seen some strange water monsters, whose por- 
trait he gave; or he might have taken a horse, 
or a gun, or a scalp; and if he had done this, 
the fact that he had taken it into his possession 
was always indicated by the representation of 
the hand grasping the captured object. 
- The making of the robe was less laborious 
than the preparing the skins for lodges, for in 
this case it was necessary to remove the hair 
as well. This was done sometimes with the 
little adz, used in thinning down the hide, or 
sometimes by the application of a lye, which 
loosened the epidermis, and enabled the tanner 
to scrape off the hair with far less labor. But 
for a lodge, from eleven to twenty skins must 
be prepared; and after all were tanned, the skins 
must be cut and sewn together, so as to form a 
perfectly fitting cover for the: conical lodge 
poles which supported it. While the woman 
laboriously tanned the skins which her husband 
had collected, and prepared great bundles of 
thread, made from the sinew of the buffalo, she 
made the lodge herself, but always invited her 
neighbors to assist in its construction. Of these 
neighbors, one was always the superintendent 
of the whole operation. She arranged the skins, 
marked them where they needed to be cut to 
fit, sometimes tacked them together at the cor- 
ners by a thread of sinew; and when all was 
ready, told the other women who were sitting 
around, each provided with her awl, her knife, 
and her bundle of thread, to begin the 
work. 

The woman who was making the lodge had 
made a feast for her guests, and they had par- 
taken of this early in the morning; and as soon 
as the skins were cut and prepared for the sew- 
ing, they fell to, and worked busily on toward 
the night. The hostess, or her relations, pre- 
pared food from time to time, and the women, 
as the fancy took them, rested from their work, 
ate and talked. Usually, however, the lodge 
was finished before night, and often the women 
who had sewn it took part in its erection; so 
that with their own eyes they could see that 
the work was well done. If by any chance a 
mistake had been made, it would be corrected 
by the lodge owner the next time the lodge 
was pulled down. There were certain beliefs 
and ceremonies connected with the making of 
the lodge; it was necessary that she who sewed 
on the strings or straps, at the back of the 
lodge near the smoke hole, should be a kindly, 
good-natured woman. If the mistake was made 
of letting a jealous, wrangling, fault-finding 
woman do this work, the lodge would never 
draw well, but would always be smoky. After 
a lodge was erected it could not at once be put 
to general use. In many tribes some ceremony 
had to be performed before it could be oc- 
cupied. While the women who took part in 
making it could go in and out, in setting it 
up and preparing it for use, the male members 
of the family were not permitted to enter it 
until it had been dedicated. Among the Chey- 
ennes this ceremony consisted in the counting 
of a coup, at the door of the lodge, by a man 
who had performed some particularly brave act; 
standing in front of the lodge, he struck it with 
a small stick, at the side of the door, and then 
in a loud voice recounted the adventure which 
gave him the right to perform this ceremony. 
After he had ceased speaking, he bent down and 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Marcu 3, 1900. 

entered the lodge, followed by a number of 
other old or brave men; and to them, sitting 
in a circle around the fire, the women brought 
food, and they had a feast. 
The lodges were variously ornamented in the 
different tribes. The varied designs, all of which 
symbolized some event, were figures of animals, 
or of people, or sometimes the sun, the moon, 
the stars, or the rainbow. Each animal, and 
often each man, painted on the lodge showed a 
triangular, or arrow-shaped figure, in the fore 
part of the body, which represented the life, or 
the heart; and commonly a dotted line ran from 
this life to the mouth, or the head of the animal. 
With the passing of the buffalo, which furn- 
ished to the wild tribes of the West their food, 
their clothing, and their shelter, which was their 
chief support, and which for that reason they 
reverenced, and prayed to, passed away also 
the old wild life. When this food supply be- 
came no longer available, their wanderings 
ceased perforce, and they changed from people 
who were free and independent, even if much 
pursued, to paupers, whose support came to 
them from those who had conquered the soil 
from which they sprang. It is not strange that 
the older Indians, living to-day, look back re- 
gretfully to the days of the buffalo. G. B. G. 
About a Very Old Friend. 
Ir does not appear that any tribe has ever been 
found which possessed no knowledge of fire. 
Even the most brutish inhabitants of Australia 
possessed it, as recorded by Spencer and Gillen 
and other explorers. Indeed, the discovery of 
fire was inevitable to man the moment he began 
to reason at all about the forces of nature, and 
more especially to experiment in the making of 
implements, And, of course, the discovery was 
made in ways as different as tribes, or localities. 
Some of these ways are indicated by compara- 
tively recent practice. For instance, the Indians 
made fire by rubbing sticks together (and some 
of their devices for creating friction were very 
skillful) ; the Alaskans, by rubbing two pieces of 
quartz smeared with native sulphur, and the 
Eskimos by striking together vigorously a piece 
of quartz and iron pyrite. The flame, or spark in 
each case was deftly communicated to a heap 
of dried grass or feathers. The burning glass 
seems to have been the»invention of that in- 
genious people the Chinese. The match, of course, 
has practically superseded these primitive meth- 
ods. Even among the remotest tribes to-day the 
Swedish or British match is in more or less gen- 
eral use. 

Who invented the match? Ask that of the 
average man and he will probably answer, “I’m 
hanged if I know!” which goes to show how 
mindful we are of our benefactors. However, in 
this case there is some excuse for the popular . 
ignorance, for to no one man belongs the honor 
of having invented the match. It has been a 
matter of evolution; but the first really practical 
friction match was made in England in 1827 by 
John Walker, a druggist of Stockton-on-Tees. 
The phosphorous friction match of the present 
day was first introduced on a commercial scale 
in 1833, and it appears to have been made almost 
simultaneously in several different places. The 
name most prominently connected with the in- 
vention, however, is that of Preschel, of Vienna. 
It is curious to: note the influence of fire in 
times past on the human mind. Generally speak- 
ing, it was regarded as a deity, or possessed of 
divine qualities or principles. Even so civilized 
peoples as the Greeks. and Romans held it in 
superstitious awe. Athens, we are told, became 
a shining light to the world only when the twelve 
tribes of Attica, led by Theseus, brought each its 
brand to the altar of Athene Polias. And Rome 
could not become powerful until the three curiz 
united their fires into one. Moreover, if by acci- 
dent the fire in the Roman temple of Vesta was 
extinguished, all tribunal, all authority, all public 
or private business had to cease immediately. 
Coming down to the middle ages, while fire, ex- 
cept among savage tribes, was no longer wor- 
shipped, it continued to be held in especial rever- 
ence. Hence, the hearth became the center of 
home and a sacred place, or place of asylum. 
This character it has not entirely lost in the old 
countries, but here we have quite divested our 
minds of any superstition in its regard, and after 
our practical fashion regard it simply as some- 
thing to cook with or warm ourselves by. At 
least this is so in the cities, where we seldom see 
an open fire, but it is different in rural parts, and 
especially in the woods. Ah, yes. There the fire 
is still, if not sacred, an object of sentimental 
regard, like a very dear friend and protector. 
Picture the poor trapper or lumberman out all 
day plodding through the snow and assailed by 
savage blasts—what a comfort, what a blessing 
it is for him to get back to camp and sit before 
a roaring log fire! There he sits, and as his bones 
thaw out a sense of well-being takes possession 
of him—the asperities of his lot are softened and 
life seems not entirely joyless. 
The writer once read of a man who was lost in 
the woods. After a search of many days he was 
found sitting by a fire, emaciated and half crazed. 
When his rescuers attempted to bring him away 
he fought desperately against it, saying he would 
never leave his best friend, at the same time point- 
ing-to the fire. This story may or may not be 
true, but at any rate it has a perfect vraisem- 
blance. For can we imagine a truer friend than 
a fire is to a poor lost wanderer in the woods? 
Undoubtedly in this climate the stove and the 
radiator are necessary, but in every house of any 
pretension there ought to be at least one room 
with an open fireplace. Nothing assuredly would 
give such an atmosphere of home, nor could there 
be a greater counter-magnet against the attrac- 
tions of the club and other anti-domestic insti- 
tutions. Those glowing coals, how they would 
appeal to a man to sit down and be comfortable. 
In company they would stimulate conversation 
and kindly feeling; alone they would soothe the 
mind to pleasant reverie. In exerting the latter 
influence they are especially potent and therefore 
no sportsman at any rate ought to be without an 
open fire. To him it would recall many a scene, 
or episode which he must delight to see, or live 
over again, and above all that evening scene when 
the chase was over and he sat taking his ease 
amid the glow and fascination of the camp. 
Frank Moonan., 
Anglers’ Club of New York. 
At the regular monthly meeting of this club, 
held the night of Feb. 13, appropriate resolutions 
on the death of Will K. Park, of Philadelphia, 
were offered. Mr. Park was well known to a 
number of the members and had been a contestant 
with them in the tournaments held during the 
past years in Madison Square Garden. The news 
of his sudden death, after only a few days’ ill- 
ness from pneumonia was a sad blow. 
Several applications for membership were pre- 
sented and other routine business transacted. 
Committees appointed for the purpose will en- 
deavor to secure from the Park Department of 
the city during the early spring the privilege of 
holding fly and bait-casting contests on one of the 
lakes in Central or Prospect Park. The plan is 
not to secure exclusive privileges, entitling mem- 
bers only to cast, which would be seriously ob- 
jected to, but to persuade the Park Department 
to erect a simple little platform along the shore 
of one of the more secluded lakes, and to permit 
any citizen of New York city, as well as visitors 
or members of casting clubs, to try their skill 
over the water. It will be pointed out that no 
hooks are to be used on any of the casting devices 
employed, that these will be either simple artifi- 
cial flies with the hook broken off, or wooden 
or rubber weights; that the desire of members is 
to cast from the proposed platform as nearly 
parallel with the shore line as possible, and not 
from the shore outward, hence injuries to per- 
sons in the park would be too remote to consider. 
There are numerous anglers in the city who 
would hail with pleasure the announcement that. 
they were to be permitted to try practice casting 
on one of the lakes, and they, as: well as members 
of the Anglers’ Club, will look forward with a 
good deal of impatience to the outcome of the re- 
quest for a place to cast. 
