The Squaws Of Each Lazy Warrior Had
Made Him A Shelter From The Sun, By Stretching A Few Buffalo Robes,
Or The Corner Of A Lodge-Covering Upon Poles; And Here He Sat In The
Shade, With A Favorite Young Squaw, Perhaps, At His Side, Glittering
With All Imaginable Trinkets.
Before him stood the insignia of his
rank as a warrior, his white shield of bull-hide, his medicine bag,
his bow and quiver, his lance and his pipe, raised aloft on a tripod
of three poles.
Except the dogs, the most active and noisy tenants
of the camp were the old women, ugly as Macbeth's witches, with their
hair streaming loose in the wind, and nothing but the tattered
fragment of an old buffalo robe to hide their shriveled wiry limbs.
The day of their favoritism passed two generations ago; now the
heaviest labors of the camp devolved upon them; they were to harness
the horses, pitch the lodges, dress the buffalo robes, and bring in
meat for the hunters. With the cracked voices of these hags, the
clamor of dogs, the shouting and laughing of children and girls, and
the listless tranquillity of the warriors, the whole scene had an
effect too lively and picturesque ever to be forgotten.
We stopped not far from the Indian camp, and having invited some of
the chiefs and warriors to dinner, placed before them a sumptuous
repast of biscuit and coffee. Squatted in a half circle on the
ground, they soon disposed of it.
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