Often I have thought, and still think, that the Ojibway loves his children more than the white man; and I have accounted for it to my own mind by the fact that they lose so many of their children, making those who remain doubly precious. And yet so often he abandons them, apparently without a cause, and apparently without ever giving them a thought again. It is a much more rare thing for an Indian woman to abandon her children. Like her white sister, she clings to them and manages to support them somehow. It is understood that it devolves on the woman to support her children.

I have never seen the slightest endearment pass between husband and wife, not the slightest outward tokens of affection. Yet there is no doubt that they are as much attached to each other, especially in middle and later life, as those of

our own race.

BABYHOOD AND CHILDHOOD.

For the first year of its life, the Ojibway baby is taken most excellent care of in its well known cradle. It is wrapped in a great many thicknesses of flannel and soft material, which effectually exclude all cold, and it is perfectly warm and comfortable in any weather. Its head is protected from injury by the wooden piece surrounding it. It likes the firm feeling of being bound and swathed in this frame, and will cry to be put into it. The frame can be leaned against the wall at any angle, and so it can be relieved by change of position; or, best of all, the mother carries it suspended on her back, by a strap passed round her forehead, while she goes about her work. I have seen a mother at Red lake, while waiting all day out of doors for the annual payment, take out in the open air and nurse her baby in a temperature of about thirty degrees below zero, and the baby was not over six weeks old. An intelligent United States Indian agent, observing them, remarked, "An Indian woman can doubly discount a white woman in taking care of her baby."

But with the emancipation of the baby from its cradle, a surprising change in its treatment occurs. It goes naked, or almost so, winter and summer, having only a shirt and moccasins until five or six years. The parents seem to think that it needs no clothes. One will see it outdoors playing in the

snow, when it is very cold, clad only with the cotton shirt, flying loose, and moccasins. Then the parents go on long winter journeys, or they very frequently travel miles in the night to some heathen dance, the mother carrying the young child on her back when the mercury stands thirty or forty degrees below zero. The dance house may be hot, and then there is the home journey in the middle of the night. These carryings to dances cause the death of great numbers of children. Their life is hard in every way, the constant moving about in winter, the insufficient food, the exposure, the insufficient clothing, the one blanket in which the little child sleeps. The wonder is that any children survive it, and only the strongest constitutions do. And when the child becomes sick, the only idea they have of doing anything for it is to drum over it night and day, or to perform the "grand medicine" rites for its recovery.

Whatever is good for them, the parents think must be good for their children also. So they give them the strongest tea to drink as soon as they are able to drink anything; and all the flesh they can eat, or anything they happen to have. From the same idea, the little children very early get to using tobacCo. I have seen a boy of four beating his mother with his tiny fists, to make her give him more tobacco. Every boy and girl thinks he or she must have tobacco, and plenty of it.

The parents have no government whatever over their children. They are absolute masters from the first dawn of intelligence, and they very quickly find it out and rule. Sometimes the mother gives the child a push or a cuff, saying to it, "You are spoiled;" but lets it take its own way. They never correct them, nor try to bend them to their will. I suppose the reason is that they lose so many children and therefore cannot bear to correct nor cross in any way those that survive.

When a child is crying, the mother tries to quiet it by saying, "Hush, that Frenchman will strike you," pointing to the white stranger who is there. Frenchman is the common name for any white man, as the French were the first white men they saw. When that is not enough, she tells it the owl will come and carry it off; and when that from long use has lost its terrors, she shows it a piece of the owl's ear, into which it will be put. As fast as one lie is worn out, another is in

vented; and threatening, which is never carried out, is also used. The moral effect on the child cannot be good.

Indian children are much more amiable than white children. They do not quarrel so with each other. Perhaps from heredity, several families living in one long wigwam, they have learned to bear with each other's frailties and to keep the peace. The grown up people, also, I think, live much more peaceably with each other than white people. Indian children in a school are not nearly so troublesome to their teachers as white children, and they are much more easily controlled.

MECHANICAL INGENUITY AND SKILL.

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Does the Ojibway have any mechanical ingenuity? great deal more than we give them credit for. In fact, they seem to be able to make anything they want to make. One of our Indian clergymen makes a cutter or sleigh that is good and serviceable, although he never had any instruction. A mixed-blood young man at White Earth was with his mother, when her wagon wheel broke. He took his ax, went into the woods, and made a new wheel that answered the purpose. Since that time he has established himself as a regular wheelwright, and seems to be able to do that work perfectly well. Yet he never had a day's instruction. To another Indian young man I lately intrusted the building of a frame parsonage. He had built only one little board shanty before, and had had no training or experience excepting that. Yet he built the two-story parsonage, costing about $500, very well, and it looks well. They undoubtedly have a great deal of mechanical ingenuity, if they wish to exert it. One of these Indians made a fiddle.

The women, too, make most beautiful patterns in their bead work, which is often marvelous. Lately some of them have been taught lace-making, and the beautiful lace they turn out astonishes white experts. A highly educated young white lady, a teacher of lace-making, told me that she spent two weeks learning a certain lace-stitch, and then took as a pupil an Indian girl with no previous training in this work, who learned it in half an hour, and could do it better than she. The Indian children also model in clay very beautiful figures.

It is a pity that their undoubted genius cannot be made to benefit the world. Usually from indifference and lack of desire to apply it, unless called out by some necessity, it is never used. But it is there in high degree, and it has already permanently enriched our civilization in giving us the birch bark canoe, the moccasin, and many other things that might be mentioned, which, for beauty and perfect adaptation to the purposes intended, cannot be surpassed.

INTELLECTUAL TRAITS; COMPARISON WITH THE WHITE RACE.

This leads me to remark that in my opinion the intellectuality of the race is very high. I think it surpasses that of our own race, though, from circmstances, not being called out, it is not used nor known. But let any one listen to them discussing anything that is propounded to them concerning their own affairs, and he will be surprised to note how they look at it in every light, discussing it from points of view that he never would have thought of, and to observe how strong and original their minds are. I think no lawyer can equal an Indian, who yet does not know a letter, in making a skillful and telling presentation of his case, in marshaling his arguments effectively, and in concealing the weak points. And yet, with all their intellectuality, in another point of view they are sometimes grown up children.

The Indian is a highly educated man, although this may sound absurd to those who hear me. Said an Oxford graduate, then an inmate of my family, who often sat with Indians at meals, "These men seem to me like highly educated men; the lines of their faces seem like the lines of the faces of highly educated men." And I think it is true, that, though in a different way from us, the Indian is so. In everything that is needed for his life, or related to it, and even beyond it, he is so. The open page of nature, all about plants and animals, about life, a thousand things that are unknown to us, he knows perfectly. His faculties are far more highly trained than ours; his perceptions are far more keen. He will see fish in the water, animals on land, the glance of a deer's eye behind a bush, or his ear sticking up, where a white man cannot see anything. Canoeing with Indians, one will constantly hear them pointing out fish, numbers of them, naming them as bass,

pike, etc.; but the white man can see nothing. So even when going along in the cars, they will see many deer or other animals where no one else can see anything.

In one respect the Indian is remarkable. He is such a reader of character. There is no use in trying to deceive him. He seems to look right through a person, and "sizes him up," as the phrase goes, much more accurately than we can. They are very accurate judges of a person's social standing.

What does the Indian think of the white man? We show them our electric lights and our other wonders, and think they will fall down and worship us as superior beings. It is not so. The Indian, it is true, sees his white brother do many wonderful things. But put the white man in his circumstances, and he is a miserably helpless creature, far inferior to the Indian. He does not know how to make a camp, how to protect himself from the cold, how to find the game. Put an Indian and a white man into the woods; the white man can see nothing and will starve to death, the Indian can find a good living. In the Indian's country and in his circumstances, the white man needs the constant help of his red brother to keep him alive. No Indian has been drowned on the great lakes of Minnesota, as Leech, Cass and Winnibigoshish, within the memory of man, unless he was loaded with whisky; the white men have just settled about those lakes, and already considerable numbers of them have been drowned. In brief, the Indian sees that he is just as superior in his sphere as the white man is in his.

The Indian has a far higher opinion of himself than the white man of himself. "Do you not know," said one of our Indian clergymen to me, "that the Indian thinks his body God?" That translated into our idiom means that he has a very high idea of his own personality. Consequently the one who treats him with very great respect is the one who gains his esteem and love.

It is strange also that with the Indian amiability is the test by which he judges. One of themselves may do anything, no matter how outrageously bad, even according to their own standard, and he will not lose caste in the least. He will associate with the others precisely as before, without a thought on his part, or on theirs, of there being any difference. But