"It IS Old Smoke's Village," Said He, Interpreting These
Signals; "Didn't I Say So?"
As the Indian approached we stopped to wait for him, when suddenly he
vanished, sinking, as it were, into the earth.
He had come upon one
of the deep ravines that everywhere intersect these prairies. In an
instant the rough head of his horse stretched upward from the edge
and the rider and steed came scrambling out, and hounded up to us; a
sudden jerk of the rein brought the wild panting horse to a full
stop. Then followed the needful formality of shaking hands. I
forget our visitor's name. He was a young fellow, of no note in his
nation; yet in his person and equipments he was a good specimen of a
Dakota warrior in his ordinary traveling dress. Like most of his
people, he was nearly six feet high; lithely and gracefully, yet
strongly proportioned; and with a skin singularly clear and delicate.
He wore no paint; his head was bare; and his long hair was gathered
in a clump behind, to the top of which was attached transversely,
both by way of ornament and of talisman, the mystic whistle, made of
the wingbone of the war eagle, and endowed with various magic
virtues. From the back of his head descended a line of glittering
brass plates, tapering from the size of a doubloon to that of a half-
dime, a cumbrous ornament, in high vogue among the Dakotas, and for
which they pay the traders a most extravagant price; his chest and
arms were naked, the buffalo robe, worn over them when at rest, had
fallen about his waist, and was confined there by a belt.
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