“It will do you no harm,” said Bisonette, “to stay here with us for a day or two, before you start for the Pueblo.”

We accepted the invitation, and pitched our tent on a rising ground above the camp and close to the edge of the trees.  Bisonette soon invited us to a feast, and we suffered abundance of the same sort of attention from his Indian associates.  The reader may possibly recollect that when I joined the Indian village, beyond the Black Hills, I found that a few families were absent, having declined to pass the mountains along with the rest.  The Indians in Bisonette’s camp consisted of these very families, and many of them came to me that evening to inquire after their relatives and friends.  They were not a little mortified to learn that while they, from their own timidity and indolence, were almost in a starving condition, the rest of the village had provided their lodges for the next season, laid in a great stock of provisions, and were living in abundance and luxury.  Bisonette’s companions had been sustaining themselves for some time on wild cherries, which the squaws pounded up, stones and all, and spread on buffalo robes, to dry in the sun; they were then eaten without further preparation, or used as an ingredient in various delectable compounds.

On the next day the camp was in commotion with a new arrival.  A single Indian had come with his family the whole way from the Arkansas.  As he passed among the lodges he put on an expression of unusual dignity and importance, and gave out that he had brought great news to tell the whites.  Soon after the squaws had erected his lodge, he sent his little son to invite all the white men, and all the most distinguished Indians, to a feast.  The guests arrived and sat wedged together, shoulder to shoulder, within the hot and suffocating lodge.  The Stabber, for that was our entertainer’s name, had killed an old buffalo bull on his way.  This veteran’s boiled tripe, tougher than leather, formed the main item of the repast.  For the rest, it consisted of wild cherries and grease boiled together in a large copper kettle.  The feast was distributed, and for a moment all was silent, strenuous exertion; then each guest, with one or two exceptions, however, turned his wooden dish bottom upward to prove that he had done full justice to his entertainer’s hospitality.  The Stabber next produced his chopping board, on which he prepared the mixture for smoking, and filled several pipes, which circulated among the company.  This done, he seated himself upright on his couch, and began with much gesticulation to tell his story.  I will not repeat his childish jargon.  It was so entangled, like the greater part of an Indian’s stories, with absurd and contradictory details, that it was almost impossible to disengage from it a single particle of truth.  All that we could gather was the following: