and we all played at living in camp.  In these camps we did the things that older people do.  A boy and girl pretended to be husband and wife, and lived in the lodge; the girl cooked and the boy went out hunting.  Sometimes some of the boys pretended that they were buffalo, and showed themselves on the prairie a little way off, and other boys were hunters, and went out to chase the buffalo.  We were too little to have horses, but the boys rode sticks, which they held between their legs, and lashed with their quirts to make them go faster.  Among those who played in this way was a girl smaller than I, the daughter of Two Bulls—­a brave man, a friend to my uncle.  The little girl’s name was Standing Alone; she was pretty and nice, and always pleasant; but she was always busy about something—­always working hard, and when she and I played at being husband and wife, she was always going for wood, or pretending to dress hides.  I liked her, and she liked me, and in these play camps we always had our little lodge together; but if I sat in the lodge, and pretended to be resting longer than she thought right, she used to scold me, and tell me to go out and hunt for food, saying that no lazy man could be her husband.  When she said this I did not answer and seemed to pay no attention to her words, but sat for a little while, thinking, and then I went out of the lodge, and did as she said.  When I came in again, whether I brought anything or not, she was always pleasant.

Once, when we were running buffalo, one of the boys, who was a buffalo, charged me when I got near him, and struck me with the thorn which he carried on the end of his stick, and which we used to call the buffalo’s horn.  The thorn pierced me in the body, and, according to the law of our play, I was so badly wounded that I was obliged to die.  I went a little way toward the village, and then pretended to be very weak.  Then my companions carried me into the camp, and to the lodge, and Standing Alone mourned over her husband who had been killed while hunting buffalo.  Then one of the boys, who pretended that he was a medicine man, built a sweat lodge, and doctored me, and I recovered.

The Way to Live.

I must have been ten years old when my uncle first began to talk to me.  Long before this, when he had made a bow and some arrows for me, he had told me that I must learn to hunt, so that in the time to come I would be able to kill food, and to support my mother and sisters.  “We must all eat,” he had said, “and the Creator has given us buffalo to support life.  It is the part of a man to kill food for the lodge, and after it has been killed, the women bring in the meat, and prepare it to be eaten, while they dress the hides for robes and lodge skins.”

My uncle was a brave man, and was always going off on the warpath, searching for the camps of enemies, taking their horses, and sometimes fighting bravely.  He was still a young man, not married; but was quiet and of good sense and all the people respected him.  Even the chiefs and older men used to listen to him when he spoke; and sometimes he was asked to a feast to which many older men were invited.