down the leg.  The winter moccasins are of dressed buffaloe-skin, the hair being worn inwards, and soaled with thick elk-skin parchment:  those for summer are of deer or elk-skin, dressed without the hair, and with soals of elk-skin.  On great occasions, or wherever they are in full dress, the young men drag after them the entire skin of a polecat fixed to the heel of the moccasin.  Another skin of the same animal is either tucked into the girdle or carried in the hand, and serves as a pouch for their tobacco, or what the French traders call the bois roule:  this is the inner bark of a species of red willow, which being dried in the sun or over the fire, is rubbed between the hands and broken into small pieces, and is used alone or mixed with tobacco.  The pipe is generally of red earth, the stem made of ash, about three or four feet long, and highly decorated with feathers, hair and porcupine quills.

The hair of the women is suffered to grow long, and is parted from the forehead across the head, at the back of which it is either collected into a kind of bag, or hangs down over the shoulders.  Their moccasins are like those of the men, as are also the leggings, which do not however reach beyond the knee, where it is met by a long loose shift of skin which reaches nearly to the ancles:  this is fastened over the shoulders by a string and has no sleeves, but a few pieces of the skin hang a short distance down the arm.  Sometimes a girdle fastens this skin round the waist, and over all is thrown a robe like that worn by the men.  They seem fond of dress.  Their lodges are very neatly constructed, in the same form as those of the Yanktons; they consist of about one hundred cabins, made of white buffaloe hide dressed, with a larger one in the centre for holding councils and dances.  They are built round with poles about fifteen or twenty feet high, covered with white skins; these lodges may be taken to pieces, packed up, and carried with the nation wherever they go, by dogs which bear great burdens.  The women are chiefly employed in dressing buffaloe skins:  they seem perfectly well disposed, but are addicted to stealing any thing which they can take without being observed.  This nation, although it makes so many ravages among its neighbours, is badly supplied with guns.  The water which they carry with them is contained chiefly in the paunches of deer and other animals, and they make use of wooden bowls.  Some had their heads shaved, which we found was a species of mourning for relations.  Another usage, on these occasions, is to run arrows through the flesh both above and below the elbow.