On the bank of Silver Lake we saw an Indian encampment.  A shower threatened us, but we resolved to try if we could not visit it before it came on.  We crossed a wide field on foot, and found the Indians amid the trees on a shelving bank; just as we reached them, the rain began to fall in torrents, with frequent thunderclaps, and we had to take refuge in their lodges.  These were very small, being for temporary use, and we crowded the occupants much, among whom were several sick, on the damp ground, or with only a ragged mat between them and it.  But they showed all the gentle courtesy which, marks their demeanor towards the stranger, who stands in any need; though it was obvious that the visit, which inconvenienced them, could only have been caused by the most impertinent curiosity, they made us as comfortable as their extreme poverty permitted.  They seemed to think we would not like to touch them; a sick girl in the lodge where I was, persisted in moving so as to give me the dry place; a woman, with the sweet melancholy eye of the race, kept off the children and wet dogs from even the hem of my garment.

Without, their fires smouldered, and black kettles, hung over them on sticks, smoked, and seethed in the rain.  An old, theatrical-looking Indian stood with arms folded, looking up to the heavens, from which the rain clashed and the thunder reverberated; his air was French-Roman; that is, more Romanesque than Roman.  The Indian ponies, much excited, kept careering through the wood, around the encampment, and now and then, halting suddenly, would thrust in their intelligent, though amazed faces, as if to ask their masters when this awful pother would cease, and then, after a moment, rush and trample off again.

At last we got away, well wetted, but with a picturesque scene for memory.  At a house where we stopped to get dry, they told us that this wandering band (of Pottawattamies), who had returned, on a visit, either from homesickness, or need of relief, were extremely destitute.  The women had been there to see if they could barter for food their head-bands, with which they club their hair behind into a form not unlike a Grecian knot.  They seemed, indeed, to have neither food, utensils, clothes, nor bedding; nothing but the ground, the sky, and their own strength.  Little wonder if they drove off the game!

Part of the same band I had seen in Milwaukee, on a begging dance.  The effect of this was wild and grotesque.  They wore much paint and feather head-dresses.  “Indians without paint are poor coots,” said a gentleman who had been a great deal with, and really liked, them; and I like the effect of the paint on them; it reminds of the gay fantasies of nature.  With them in Milwaukie was a chief, the finest Indian figure I saw, more than six feet in height, erect, and of a sullen, but grand gait and gesture.  He wore a deep-red blanket, which fell in large folds from his shoulders to his feet, did not join in the dance, but slowly strode about through the streets, a fine sight, not a French-Roman, but a real Roman.  He looked unhappy, but listlessly unhappy, as if he felt it was of no use to strive or resist.