ne. If ever you go
among the red men, you must learn to smoke; for to refuse to draw a
whiff through the friendly pipe offered to you, would be regarded as a
sad affront.

_Basil._ What will you do now, Austin? You never smoked a pipe in your
life.

_Austin._ Oh, I should soon learn; besides, I need only take a very
little whiff.

_Hunter._ You must learn to eat dog's flesh, too; for when the Indians
mean to confer a great honour on a chief or a stranger, they give him
a dog feast, in which they set before him their most favourite dogs,
killed and cooked. The more useful the dogs were, and the more highly
valued, the greater is the compliment to him in whose honour the feast
is given; and if he were to refuse to eat of the dog's flesh, thus
prepared out of particular respect to him, no greater offence could be
offered to his hospitable entertainers.

_Brian._ You have something a little harder to do now, I think,
Austin; to learn to eat dog's flesh.

_Austin._ You may depend upon it, that I shall keep out of the way of
a dog feast. I might take a little whiff at their pipe, but I could
not touch their dainty dogs.

_Hunter._ In some of the large lodges, I have seen very impressive
common life-scenes. Fancy to yourselves a large round lodge, holding
ten or a dozen beds of buffalo skins, with a high post between every
bed. On these posts hang the shields, the war-clubs, the spears, the
bows and quivers, the eagle-plumed head-dresses, and the medicine bags
of the different Indians who sleep there; and on the top of each post
the buffalo mask, with its horns and tail, used in the buffalo dance.
Fancy to yourselves a group of Indians in the middle of the lodge,
with their wives and their little ones around them, smoking their
pipes and relating their adventures, as happy as ease and the supply
of all their animal wants can make them. While you gaze on the scene,
so strange, so wild, so picturesque and so happy, an emotion of
friendly feeling for the red man thrills your bosom, a tear of
pleasure starts into your eye; and, before you are aware, an
ejaculation of thankfulness has escaped your lips, to the Father of
mercies, that, in his goodness and bounty to mankind, he has not
forgotten the inhabitants of the forest and the prairie.

The Indians have a method of hardening their shields, by smoking them
over a fire, in a hole in the ground; and, usually, when a warrior
thus smokes his shield, he gives a feast to his