Lake Indians have removed to White Earth; and about 300 Leech Lake Indians and 100 Cass Lakers, and perhaps 1,000 more French Canadian mixed-bloods, who had been living scattered among the whites in Minnesota and Wisconsin, have come to the same place. Also a band of Pembinas, largely mixed-bloods, removed to the White Earth reservation about twenty-four years ago.

On the White Earth reservation more than three-fourths of the present 3,000 population are mixed-bloods, mostly French. At Red Lake Agency and at Leech lake there are also many. About Leech lake there are perhaps a hundred descendants of the negro Bungo; nearly all these are very muscular, and some have been of unusually fine physique. The mixed-bloods generally are inferior to the full-bloods morally, and I think also mentally and physically. However, as they speak French and generally English also, they have advantage over the full-blood Ojibways. It should be said, moreover, that there are some mixed-bloods who are as good and as nice in every way as any white people.

The beautiful and fertile land of the White Earth reservation, and the rations given by the United States government for from one to five years to each member of the families who would remove there, since the treaty of 1889, have been the inducements which have influenced those who came, both mixed-bloods and Indians. In addition, they had houses built for them, land broken, stoves, wagons, sleighs, cows and oxen given them, and many other inducements, enabling them to make a good start in life.

THE OJIBWAY'S LOVE OF HIS NATIVE PLACE.

But the Indian is very strongly attached to his old home, where he was born; and, unlike the white man, he generally lives and dies in his native village. He knows every tree and pond for miles around, and he knows he can make a living there for he has always done so; but he has a dread of going elsewhere, even to far more fertile land, to try to make his living, for that is launching out on, to him, an unknown sea. Hence the offer of four or five years' rations of, to him, most luxurious food, and of oxen, plows, wagons, and everything

to begin farming with, has not tempted the Ojibways in large numbers from their native lakes, as Mille Lacs, Leech lake, Cass lake, and others. The Ojibway reasons to himself: “I have here an inexhaustible supply of fish; I have venison, wild rice, and other things; but if I go on the prairie, where there are none of these things, and where I must plow and work for a living, perhaps I shall have a hard time. So perhaps I had better not leave the fish, nor let these offers tempt me."

The Ojibway always, in his natural state, lives on lakes or rivers. He is a fish Indian, and draws his subsistence largely from the water. Formerly he lived on other flesh. Old Indians still living tell of the countless herds of buffalo, moose, elk, reindeer, and other animals, which filled the country in their young days, and which they say were in such vast numbers that they did not think then it would ever be possible by any effort of man to diminish them. They tell of the moose yarding together in those days, in winters when the snow was very deep, in droves of hundreds, and of their going and killing them all with their axes. But with the nearer approach of the white man the game was driven off, and the Ojibway became of necessity a fish Indian. The fish could not be driven off like the buffalo. In their natural state, fish is about threefourths of their living. It may be proper here to say that when the earliest Indians were removed to White Earth, in 1868, there were still a few buffalo to be seen on the prairies there, and for some years afterward.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE.

In appearance the Ojibway is a fine looking man, especially when living in the freedom of his native forests, and before he has been enfeebled by the vices he has learned from white men. Many are quite tall, the tallest I have seen being from 6 feet and 4 inches to 6 feet 8 inches. They have well developed chests and sinewy frames. Their limbs are not nearly so heavy as those of many white men. They very generally have small and beautifully shaped hands; indeed, from their hands one would take them to be of nature's aristocracy. The men have an erect, graceful, and easy carriage, and a beautiful springy step and motion in their native wilds, where they walk and look like the lords of creation. In their beauty of

motion in walking the men far surpass our race; there is no swinging of the arms, or other awkward motions, but grace and a beautiful poise and carriage of the body.

As is well known, they have abundant thick and strong hair. I can only recall about two Indians of the whole Ojibway nation who are bald, and they only partially so. Nor does their hair early turn gray, as often with us; this change comes only in extreme old age. When approaching the age of eighty years, an Ojibway's hair turns gray, but not much before. Often at the age of seventy-five, their hair is as black and thick as at twenty. Their hair never turns quite white, so far as I can remember.

The Ojibway man has usually beautiful, white, even teeth, till far past middle age, although he never cleans them and takes no care of them whatever. The voice is usually high pitched and resonant; the eye black and liquid. The man does not usually get stout as he grows old; he rather, if anything, dries up. It is rare to see a fat Indian man, except when it has been caused by excessive drinking. Their leanness, as they grow older, has been accounted for, in my mind, by their incessant spitting from their great use of tobacco, and by the spare diet to which they are usually condemned.

The women are in many respects a great contrast to the men. Instead of the beautiful springing step, they trudge along with a heavy, plodding tread, devoid of all beauty of motion. They have not a particle of the grace in motion of their white sisters. Their heavy gait I have accounted for in my own mind by the heavy packs and burdens which for generations they have had to bear. Many of the women have packed, all their lives, burdens of two hundred pounds. With this continued for centuries, it is no wonder that their step is heavy. The Ojibway man, in his native state, rarely carries any pack, if there be woman along to do it, unless there is so much that both must pack. He puts it upon the woman, while he strides along in front, magnificently, with his gun. Both parties seem to look on that as natural and proper. Sometimes when a man marries a young woman, he puts his own pack on her in addition to her own and soon breaks her down. In this, as in nearly all here written, I am speaking

of the heathen Indian; for when they become Christians, they view things in a very different light, and their practice approaches our own. The woman always walks behind, never by the side of a man. Often on the top of her enormous pack, if the articles be bulky, as when moving her wigwam, etc., from place to place, one can see the baby perched high above her head, securely tied to keep it from falling from its perilous height. On a journey the woman packs the birch bark for the wigwam, the rush mats to sleep on, the cooking utensils, the food. Sometimes I have seen the woman invert the heavy canoe, weighing 80 or 100 pounds, over her head, and carry it for miles and miles over all portages, while her husband took the light traps. The women generally have very large waists. In middle life they are usually quite stout and fleshy, and I think would average more in weight than the men. They seem to be just as expert with the axe, and as strong for all kinds of labor.

At Red Lake the women especially, but also the men, are, for some reason unknown to me, exceedingly tall. The Red Lake Indians are by far taller than the other Ojibways, which is the more remarkable as they have not lived at Red Lake very long. Many of the men there are 6 feet 4 inches in stature. I have known some so tall as 6 feet 8 inches. I know considerable numbers of old women there who must be about 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall. It would be interesting to know what there is in the soil, water, or food, which has so soon produced such a tall race.

INFREQUENCE OF INSANITY.

It is strange that, considering the hardships of their lives, insanity is extremely rare among the Ojibways. Only once, along in the 70's or 80's, during an Indian payment at Mille Lacs, when many hundreds were collected, did I see an Indian who seemed to be insane, and he not very violent. A crowd of young men and boys were around him, teasing and mocking him, and he was striking at them. That is the only crazy man I happened to see, or to know of. A young mixed-blood man from White Earth, nearly white, was in an insane asylum for some time; also a woman from Leech lake was under such care for a time. Also a middle-aged man wandered off into the

woods in a semi-demented state and died. I have known only two feeble-minded or idiotic, one a young man of twenty-three years, whose idiocy was caused before his birth by his mother's seeing for the first time a railroad train, which rushed out at her from a cut on the Northern Pacific railroad. She fell in a dead faint and lay thus for some time, and her son is an idiot. It is also a matter of thankfulness that, considering the hardships, suicide is extremely rare. There has been only one case in twenty-five years, this being an elderly woman who hung herself at the gate in front of her door, after a family quarrel.

CHANGES DURING THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.

It may be interesting to compare a first look at the Ojibways with what one sees to-day. It was in 1873 on the White Earth reservation. Many of the Indians then dressed in the old Indian garb of blankets, cotton leggings, and moccasins. Now there are only a few old men who are so dressed, though all who can get them still prefer the moccasins. The White Earth Indians were then rapidly rising in all respects, under the influence of the mission and the admirable management of the agent, E. P. Smith. There was a little church well attended; but old Indian habits, as might be expected, were still strong. Sometimes they would go from the church, at the conclusion of service, to the Indian dance which was in full blast not far from the church door with all its drumming, whooping, and jumping up and down. There was thus the mixture of Christianity and heathenism which might be expected.

That winter there came from Red lake, where they were all at that time wild men, about sixty old grand medicine men, in January, when the thermometer was about forty degrees below zero, bringing the big medicine drum with them, and sleeping out about four times on the way, 80 or 90 miles. Their coming created a greater sensation than would that of Paderewski to your city. The big drum was brought out, with all the old fellows from Red lake singing around it so loud that their voices could be heard, it would seem, for miles; and soon most of the inhabitants of White Earth, discarding the garments of civilization which they had lately put on, and