The dresses worn by herself, as well as by her husband or her brother, would not be less astonishing to the unaccustomed eye.  The men wear a common blue capote a red belt and corduroy trousers.  This, however, soon became the costume of every male in Red River, whether Metis or new-come Canadian.  There, is however, a distinction in the manner of wearing.  Lest the Canadian should be taken for a Metis he wears the red belt over the capote, while the half-breed wears it beneath.  The women are fond of show, and like to attire themselves in dark skirts, and crimson bodices.  Frequently, if the entire dress be dark, they tie a crimson or a magenta sash around their handsomely shapen waists; and they put a cap of some denomination of red upon their heads.  Such colours, it need not be said, add to their beauty, and it is by no means uncertain that this is the reason why they adopt these colours.  Some writers say that their love of glaring colours is derived from the savage side of their natures; but the Metis women have an artistic instinct of their own, and being for the greater part coquettes, it may very safely be said that according to the fitness of things is it that they attire themselves.  But they are not able to shake off the superstitions of their race.  If the young woman soon to be a mother, sees a hawk while crossing the fields in the morning, she comes home and tells among her female friends that her offspring is to be a son; and they all know that he is to be fleet and enduring in the chase, and that he will have the eyes of a hunter chief.  But if a shy pigeon circle up from the croft, and cross her path, she sighs and returns not back to relate the omen; and it is only in undertones that her nearest friend learns a week afterwards that the promised addition to the household is to be a girl.  The appearance of other birds and beasts, under similar circumstances, are likewise tokens; and though boys would be born, and girls too, if all the hawks and pigeons, and foxes and wild geese, and every other presaging bird and beast of the plains had fallen to the gun of huntsman and “sport,” they cling to the belief; and the superstition will only die with the civilization that begat it.  Many of the customs of their red mothers they still reverently perpetuate; but they are for all this deeply overlaid with Canadianism.  Of all the women on the face of the earth, they are the greatest gossips.

Not in their whole nature is there any impulse so strong as the love to talk.  Therefore, when the morning’s meal is ended, the pretty mother laces the boots around her shapely little ankles, puts her blanket about her, and sallies out to one of her friend’s houses for the morning’s gossip.  In speaking of her dress, I neglected to state that although the Metis woman had for gown the costliest fabric ever woven in Cashmere, she would not be content, on the hottest summer day, in walking twenty paces to her neighbour’s door, unless she had this blanket