he had acquired from long intercourse with the In
dians. Wherever he went there was silence and re
spect, for was he not the great white medicine-man?
Gambling circles paused in the swift passage of the
stick and the monotone of the chant to look and to
comment; buyers and sellers stopped to gaze and to
question; children who had been building minia
ture wigwams of sticks or floating bark canoes in the
puddles, ran away at his approach and took shelter
in the thickets, watching him with twinkling black
eyes.
Wherever there was opportunity, he stopped and talked, scattering seed-thoughts in the dark minds of the Indians. Wherever he paused a crowd would gather; whenever he entered a wigwam a throng collected at the door.
Let us glance for a moment into the domestic life of the Indians as Cecil saw it that morning.
He enters one of the large bark huts of the Willa mette Indians, a long, low building, capable of shel tering sixty or seventy persons. The part around the door is painted to represent a man s face, and the entrance is through the mouth. Within, he finds a spacious room perhaps eighty or a hundred feet long by twenty wide, with rows of rude bunks rising tier above tier on either side. In the centre are the stones and ashes of the hearth; above is an aperture in the roof for the escape of smoke; around the hearth mats are spread to sit upon; the bare ground, hard and trodden, forms the only floor, and the roof is made of boards that have been split out with mallet and wedges.
Cecil enters and stands a moment in silenc
