ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but
unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and
the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a
million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul,
through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told
in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race,
to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer
dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the
sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man,
for a word in my own tongue.

It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe
assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount
the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the
reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of
the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was
a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell
of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an
ever-increasing pile of bones.

I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a
slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and
standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets
of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down
again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired
much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red
man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.

It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and
descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance