shoulders, gazing coldly upon us; and in the rear, for several acres,
the ground was covered with a temporary encampment; men, women, and
children swarmed like bees; hundreds of dogs, of all sizes and colors,
ran restlessly about; and, close at hand, the wide shallow stream was
alive with boys, girls, and young squaws, splashing, screaming, and
laughing in the water. At the same time a long train of emigrant
wagons were crossing the creek, and dragging on in their slow, heavy
procession, passed the encampment of the people whom they and their
descendants, in the space of a century, are to sweep from the face of
the earth.

The encampment itself was merely a temporary one during the heat of the
day. None of the lodges were erected; but their heavy leather coverings,
and the long poles used to support them, were scattered everywhere
around, among weapons, domestic utensils, and the rude harness of mules
and horses. 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