with vermilion, their ears with pendants of shell, and their necks with
beads. Never yet having signalized themselves as hunters, or performed
the honorable exploit of killing a man, they were held in slight
esteem, and were diffident and bashful in proportion. Certain formidable
inconveniences attended this influx of visitors. They were bent on
inspecting everything in the room; our equipments and our dress alike
underwent their scrutiny; for though the contrary has been carelessly
asserted, few beings have more curiosity than Indians in regard to
subjects within their ordinary range of thought. As to other matters,
indeed, they seemed utterly indifferent. They will not trouble
themselves to inquire into what they cannot comprehend, but are quite
contented to place their hands over their mouths in token of wonder, and
exclaim that it is "great medicine." With this comprehensive solution,
an Indian never is at a loss. He never launches forth into speculation
and conjecture; his reason moves in its beaten track. His soul is
dormant; and no exertions of the missionaries, Jesuit or Puritan, of the
Old World or of the New, have as yet availed to rouse it.

As we were looking, at sunset, from the wall, upon the wild and desolate
plains that surround the fort, we observed a cluster of strange objects
like scaffolds rising in the distance against the red western sky. They
bore aloft some singular looking burdens; and at their foot glimmered
something white like bones. This was the place of sepulture of some
Dakota chiefs, whose remains their people are fond of placing in the
vicinity of the fort, in the hope that they may thus be protected from
violation at the hands of their enemies. Yet it has happened more than
once, and quite recently, that war parties of the Crow Indians, ranging
through the country, have thrown the bodies from the scaffolds, and
broken them to pieces amid the yells of the Dakotas, who remained pent
up in the fort, too few to defend the honored relics from insult. The