But to return.  Look into our tent, or enter, if you can bear the stifling smoke and the close atmosphere.  There, wedged close together, you will see a circle of stout warriors, passing the pipe around, joking, telling stories, and making themselves merry, after their fashion.  We were also infested by little copper-colored naked boys and snake-eyed girls.  They would come up to us, muttering certain words, which being interpreted conveyed the concise invitation, “Come and eat.”  Then we would rise, cursing the pertinacity of Dakota hospitality, which allowed scarcely an hour of rest between sun and sun, and to which we were bound to do honor, unless we would offend our entertainers.  This necessity was particularly burdensome to me, as I was scarcely able to walk, from the effects of illness, and was of course poorly qualified to dispose of twenty meals a day.  Of these sumptuous banquets I gave a specimen in a former chapter, where the tragical fate of the little dog was chronicled.  So bounteous an entertainment looks like an outgushing of good will; but doubtless one-half at least of our kind hosts, had they met us alone and unarmed on the prairie, would have robbed us of our horses, and perchance have bestowed an arrow upon us beside.  Trust not an Indian.  Let your rifle be ever in your hand.  Wear next your heart the old chivalric motto Semper PARATUS.

One morning we were summoned to the lodge of an old man, in good truth the Nestor of his tribe.  We found him half sitting, half reclining on a pile of buffalo robes; his long hair, jet-black even now, though he had seen some eighty winters, hung on either side of his thin features.  Those most conversant with Indians in their homes will scarcely believe me when I affirm that there was dignity in his countenance and mien.  His gaunt but symmetrical frame, did not more clearly exhibit the wreck of bygone strength, than did his dark, wasted features, still prominent and commanding, bear the stamp of mental energies.  I recalled, as I saw him, the eloquent metaphor of the Iroquois sachem:  “I am an aged hemlock; the winds of a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I am dead at the top!” Opposite the patriarch was his nephew, the young aspirant Mahto-Tatonka; and besides these, there were one or two women in the lodge.

The old man’s story is peculiar, and singularly illustrative of a superstitious custom that prevails in full force among many of the Indian tribes.  He was one of a powerful family, renowned for their warlike exploits.  When a very young man, he submitted to the singular rite to which most of the tribe subject themselves before entering upon life.  He painted his face black; then seeking out a cavern in a sequestered part of the Black Hills, he lay for several days, fasting and praying to the Great Spirit.  In the dreams and visions produced by his weakened and excited state, he fancied like all Indians, that he saw supernatural