potatoes. The rest of his time, when not hunting, is spent in gambling; or in lying on his mat in the house or wigwam, gossiping; or in visiting other wigwams or bands of Indians; or, for some part, in dancing. He also spends a good deal of time in drumming and singing. The woman is the bread-winner of the family.

OJIBWAY GAMBLING; FEASTS AND COUNCILS; HIS IDEAL.

He does not think gambling any harm; he has been used to it all his life. If in winter, it is done in his wigwam or house, where he is warm; if in summer, out of doors. A blanket is spread, beside which from one to three drummers, holding aloft small drums in their hands, keep drumming and singing the gambling chant or song while the game goes on. Usually, when approaching a village, one can hear the gambling drums at a long distance; and coming nearer he finds the men collected in a group, the gamblers, who may be six or eight in number, hard at their business, and the rest of the men interested spectators around them. As fast as the drummers are exhausted with the continual high-pitched singing, others are substituted for them. They do not seem to be able to gamble well without the drumming and singing. The women of the village are all quietly going about their work, but no man is doing anything; they have all been attracted by the game. The gamblers often seem to have a kind of fit on when engaged in it; their bodies seem to be disjointed, and each particular limb to be shaking a shake of its own. The game often lasts three days, and till it is finished they hardly take time to eat or sleep. The stakes are anything a man has, his gun, his blanket, his coat. I have sometimes seen a man go through the winter in his shirt sleeves, who had gambled away his coat. One man took off and gambled away his only pair of pants. It is usually done in their own way, the bullet and moccasin game; but some use cards. The little boys begin at a very early age, and sometimes the women gamble in their houses or in the street; but the women are not nearly such incessant gamblers as the men.

Sometimes the heathen Ojibway goes through a performance manifesting forth to himself and to others that he is a

god, that he has supernatural powers. He sits down outside, collects all the movable articles around him, and keeps them flying into the air, tossing them about and all around in every conceivable manner. His admiration of himself grows as he witnesses his miraculous performances until he comes to look on himself as indeed a god.

In every Indian village there is always something going Some are striving for superiority, just as it is among ourselves; and others are trying to pull them down. Every day the men meet to discuss matters; there is continual counciling. One of our Indian clergymen who lived at Red lake twelve years said that never once in that time did there cease to be something going on, that took up their attention. Often when sitting in the wigwam one will see the blanket door pulled aside for a moment, a face appears, and "You are invited to a feast" is said to the good man of the house. He thereupon rises, picks up a wooden mug and spoon, and goes. The feast consists probably of whole boiled corn, and perhaps fish, of which the guest gets a mugfull; but there is something to be talked about that seems vitally important to them. Of late years electing some of their number to go to Washington about their affairs takes months of counciling, and keeps their minds continually on the stretch.

Then sometimes it takes the man many hours in a day to paint his face properly for the dance, and to oil his hair and arrange his head-dress of feathers. So his time is very fully occupied. In summer he goes off a hundred miles or more to visit another band of Chippewas; or he goes to visit the Sioux two or three hundred miles away, and is gone most of the summer. So his time slips away, and he effects nothing.

The conception of life by the Ojibway and by the white man is fundamentally different. The white man's thought is to do something, to achieve something; the Indian's is that life is one long holiday. He has no wish for any improvement, nor to live differently; he just wishes to take his ease and enjoy himself. He sees the white lumberman, for instance, out two miles from his logging camp, waiting for daylight to begin work; sees him toiling all day, "dinnering out," and going home tired, in the dark, to his logging camp. The Ojibway thinks he has a far better way, he has been lying in his

wigwam all day, enjoying himself, warm and comfortable. If he gets hungry, he goes out and catches a rabbit, for there are a plenty of rabbits everywhere. So he finds far more enjoyment in his life than he would in the toiling, slaving life of the white man.

INDUSTRY OF THE WOMEN; THEIR SERVILE POSITION.

The Ojibway woman, on the other hand, is industrious, especially the middle-aged and old woman. Besides fishing for the family, the women usually raise all the corn and potatoes raised, put away the produce of the gardens, gather the wild rice, and, generally speaking, do all the work. The women every afternoon, as was before stated, take their axes, chop the wood, and carry it to the lodge door with their packing straps. It may be a short or a long distance. If the woods have all been cut away near the village, and if there are ponies as at White Earth, Leech lake, and other places, then ponies are used to bring it; but when the logs have been deposited at the door, the woman always takes her ax and chops it. No family ever thinks of keeping a day's wood ahead; so if there is a blizzard and excessive cold, say at Leech lake, every pony and sled that can be mustered has to be out in the midst of the blizzard on the ice going for wood. It is that or freeze.

The women, though far superior to the men in point of usefulness, and it seems to me their equals in bodily strength, are made to occupy a position of great inferiority. The woman always walks behind the man; and she turns out of the path for a man when she meets him. At a feast women never sit with the men; even the young boys have to be served first; and then, last of all, the women, who have had all the labor of preparing the feast, can sit down and consume the fragments. Even the exclamations of the language are not common to both sexes as with us; the woman has her own, exclusively for women, and must not use those a man does. The Indians look on our deference for women as foolish, affected, a fad.

The heathen man thinks it his undoubted right to whip his wife, and he exercises his privilege freely. That is one objection that even some Christian Indians find against the Christion religion; namely, that the wives, knowing they will no

longer be whipped, since their husbands have become Christians, presume upon that and are not nearly so good and submissive as they formerly were, or as they ought to be. Generally the wife yields to the argument of the ax helve on her scalp, and, like a spoiled child, seems to feel better after she has been whipped. But that is not always the case. An Ojibway whose name is, in translation, The one with the far sounding and penetrating voice, undertook to whip his wife, but she turned on him and broke his arm, then tenderly nursed him till he was well, and they have been a most loving couple ever since. And it is true that among the Ojibways there is about the same proportion of women as among the white people, who, being stronger mentally and with more energy and sense, rule and govern their husbands, to the good of all. Especially in middle and later life the intellectuality and masculine powers of the wife are apt to come to the front.

MARRIAGE, AND ABANDONING WIFE AND CHILDREN.

Many of the heathen Ojibways have two wives, and some three. It is considered perfectly proper to have as many wives as one can, and as there are government annuities for each woman and each child, which the man as head of the house draws, it is an inducement to add more. Sometimes the two wives are sisters. Usually they live in far better peace with each other than white women would under such circumstances. The man usually has two separate homes or wigwams for his two families; but sometimes they live in one house. Often the first wife feels aggrieved at the taking of a second, but does not actively object.

There is no marriage ceremony among the Ojibways. Usually all the girls (I am speaking here as everywhere else in this paper, unless the contrary is expressly stated, of the heathen Ojibways) begin to bear children as soon as nature will permit, and keep on bearing as long as nature will allow. I have never known an Indian girl to live as an unmarried woman,— I am speaking of the heathen. But I have known Christian Ojibway young women who lived single always, and whose characters were as spotless as any woman's could be. Among the heathen a girl usually lives a while with one man, and then with another, and there is a great deal of changing

around. Usually, though, the elderly and old people are faithful to each other and continue to live together. But any heathen woman, one will find on inquiry, has lived with a good many different husbands. There was only one man among the Ojibways who never married. He was in consequence called "The everlasting young unmarried man." He lived to the age of seventy years.

It is quite common for a husband, after having lived with a woman for a long time and raised quite a family, to abandon her and his children without any cause, and to take another woman and begin to rear a new family. A man, for instance, will abandon his wife and children at Leech lake, and go to Red lake, seventy-five miles distant, and take a new wife there. Or he may do so in the same village. In such circumstances he never does anything to support the wife and children he has abandoned. I have never known a man in such a case to do the slightest thing for the children. But when the time of the annual payment comes round, he always tries to get the annuities coming to the children and to his abandoned wife, and generally succeeds. If he be opposed, he makes a bitter fight before the Indian agent, to that end. And when he gets hold of the money, he never gives any of them one cent. One can constantly hear the poor woman lamenting that not only has all the money of the children, whom she is supporting, been taken, but that he has got hers also. The woman always supports the children. The man only helps his children, even when they are members of the family in which he is living. He does not seem to lose caste in the slightest degree by such desertion or non-support of his children. It is so common that it is looked on as the regular thing.

Let no one think from this that the Ojibway man does not love his children. He seems to love them dearly. In his wigwam or log cabin he fondles them and plays with them by the hour, just like a white father. When they are sick he seems just as much distressed as a white father would be. He will not let them go away to school, if it be any long distance away, for fear that something may befall them, and he far away. When they sicken and die, he shows the greatest dejection and the most bitter grief. I have seen him burst into tears.