omething also--pieces of flags, or old tin pans or
buckets, upon which they beat with sticks, making horrible noises. Each
Indian was chanting in a sing-song, mournful way. They were dressed
most fancifully; some with red coats, probably discarded by the Canadian
police, and Faye said that almost everyone had on quantities of beads
and feathers.

Bringing the hand of a dead Sioux was only an Indian's way of begging
for something to eat, and this Colonel Palmer understood, so great tin
cups of hot coffee and boxes of hard-tack were served to them. Then they
danced and danced, and to me it looked as though they intended to dance
the rest of their lives right on that one spot. But when they saw that
any amount of furious dancing would not boil more coffee, they stopped,
and finally started back to their village.

Faye tells me that as he was going to his tent from the dancing, he
noticed an Indian who seemed to be unusually well clad, his moccasins
and leggings were embroidered with beads and he was wrapped in a
bright-red blanket, head as well as body. As he passed him a voice said
in the purest English, "Lieutenant, can you give me a sear spring for my
rifle?" The only human being near was that Indian, wrapped closely in
a blanket, with only his eyes showing, precisely as one would expect to
see a hostile dressed. Faye said that it gave him the queerest kind of a
sensation, as though the voice had come from another world. He asked the
Indian where he had learned such good English and technical knowledge
of guns, and he said at the Carlisle school. He said also that he was
a Piegan and on a visit to some Cree friends. This was one of the many
proofs that we have had, that no matter how good an education the Indian
may receive, he will return to his blanket and out-of-the-pot way of
living just as soon as he returns to his people. It would be foolish to
expect anything different.

But those Cree Indians! The coffee had been good, very good, and they
wanted more, so the very next morning they brought to Colonel Palmer
an old dried scalp lock, scalp of "White Chief's enemy," with the same
ceremony as they had brought the hand. Then they sat around his tent and
watched him, giving little grunts now and then until in desperation he
ordered coffee for them, after which they danced. The men gave them bits
of tobacco too. Well, they kept this performance up three or four days,
each day bringing something to Colonel Palmer to ma