them and it. But they showed
all the gentle courtesy which marks them towards the stranger, who
stands in any need; though it was obvious that the visit, which
inconvenienced them, could only have been caused by the most impertinent
curiosity, they made us as comfortable as their extreme poverty
permitted. They seemed to think we would not like to touch them: a sick
girl in the lodge where I was, persisted in moving so as to give me the
dry place; a woman with the sweet melancholy eye of the race, kept off
the children and wet dogs from even the hem of my garment.

Without, their fires smouldered, and black kettles, hung over them on
sticks, smoked and seethed in the rain. An old theatrical looking Indian
stood with arms folded, looking up to the heavens, from which the rain
dashed and the thunder reverberated; his air was French-Roman, that is,
more romanesque than Roman. The Indian ponies, much excited, kept
careering through the wood, around the encampment, and now and then
halting suddenly, would thrust in their intelligent, though amazed,
phizzes, as if to ask their masters when this awful pother would cease,
and then, after a moment, rush and trample off again.

At last we got off, well wetted, but with a picturesque scene for
memory. At a house where we stopped to get dry, they told us that this
wandering band (of Pottawattamies,) who had returned on a visit, either
from homesickness, or need of relief, were extremely destitute. The
women had been there to see if they could barter their head bands with
which they club their hair behind into a form not unlike a Grecian knot,
for food. They seemed, indeed, to have neither food, utensils, clothes,
nor bedding; nothing but the ground, the sky, and their own strength.
Little wonder if they drove off the game!

Part of the same band I had seen in Milwaukie, on a begging dance. The
effect of this was wild and grotesque. They wore much paint and feather
head-dresses. "Indians without paint are poor coots," said a gentleman
who had been a great deal with, and really liked, them; and I like the
effect of the paint on them; it reminds of the gay fantasies of nature.
With them in Milwaukie, was a chief, the finest Indian figure I saw,
more than six feet in height, erect, and of a sullen, but grand gait and
gesture. He wore a deep red blanket, which fell in large folds from his
shoulders to his feet, did not join in the dance, but slowly strode
about through the streets, a