Our village was over there.  I saw the general come with troops and San Carlos scouts to surround (or capture) the Mescalero Indians.  There were a great many San Carlos scouts and soldiers.

I saw that my people were afraid, and half of them fled.

Next morning the Mescaleros did not shoot (were not hostile).  The others came and killed many Mescaleros.  The cavalry and infantry brought us (the Mescaleros) to this camp as prisoners.

The San Carlos scouts were well supplied with ammunition and guns, and shot many Warm Spring Indians and Mescaleros.

The San Carlos scouts are brave men.

NA-WA-GI-JIG’S STORY.

The following is contributed by Mr. FRANCIS JACKER: 

This narrative was related to me by John Na-wa-gi-jig (literally “noon-day sky"), an aged Ojibwa, with whom I have been intimately connected for a long period of years.  He delivered his story, referring to one of the many incidents in his perilous life, orally, but with pantomimes so graphic and vivid that it may be presented truly as a specimen of gesture language.  Indeed, to any one familiar with Indian mimicry, the story might have been intelligible without the expedient of verbal language, while the oral exposition, incoherent as it was, could hardly be styled anything better than the subordinate part of the delivery.  I have endeavored to reproduce these gestures in their original connections from memory, omitting the verbal accompaniment as far as practicable.  In order to facilitate a clear understanding it is stated that the gesturer was in a sitting posture before a camp fire by the lake shore, and facing the locality where the event referred to had actually occurred, viz, a portion of Keweenaw Bay, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of Portage Entry, as seen by the annexed diagram, Fig. 319.  The time of the relation (latter part of April) also coincided with the actual time.  In speaking of “arm,” “hand,” “finger,” &c., the “right” is understood if not otherwise specified.  “Finger” stands for “forefinger.”

(1) With the exclamation “me-wi-ja” (a long time ago), uttered in a slow and peculiarly emphatic manner, he elevated the arm above and toward the right at the head, accompanying the motion with an upward wave of the hand and held it thus suspended a moment—­a long time ago. (This gesture resembles sign for time, a long, of which it seems to be an abbreviation, and it is not sufficiently clear without the accompanying exclamation.) Withdrawing it slowly, he placed the hand back upon his knee.

(2) He then brought up the left hand toward the temple and tapped his hair, which was gray, with the finger—­hair gray.

(3) From thence he carried it down upon the thigh, placing the extended finger perpendicularly upon a fold of his trousers, which the thumb and finger of the right held grasped in such a manner as to advantageously present the smooth black surface of the cloth—­of that color, i.e., black.