es walked
as in the olden time. Every man, woman, and child able to sit a horse
was mounted. No one wore a white man's hat or shoes or vest; all were in
leggings and moccasins, fringed and painted, and they carried their
summer blankets as they once carried their robes of the buffalo-skin.
Even the boys of six and seven wore suits cunningly fashioned and
decorated like those of their elders. The young warriors, painted, and
with fluttering feathers, rode their fleetest ponies, with shoulders
bare and gleaming like bronze in the sun.

With all due form, without hurry or jostling, the whole tribe camped in
a wide ellipse, each clan in its place, each family having a fixed
position in the circle. The tepees rose like magic, and their threads of
smoke began to creep up into the clear sky like mysterious plants,
slender and wavering.

Greetings passed from camp to camp, the head men met in council, and, as
the sun rose higher, swarms of the young men galloped to and fro,
laying out a racing-course and making up for a procession under Wilson's
direction.

Curtis said: "I am not interdicting any of their customs merely because
they belong to their old life, but because some of them are coarse or
hurtful. Their dance is not harmful unless protracted to the point of
interfering with their work. That they are all living somewhat in the
past, to-day, is true; but they will put away this finery and go to work
with me to-morrow. To cut them off from all amusement is cruel
fanaticism. No people can endure without amusement."

"How appropriate their gay colors seem in this hot, dun land!" remarked
Elsie. "They would look gaudy in a studio; but out here they are
grateful to the sense."

In the centre of the wide circle of tepees a huge bower of pines was
being erected for the dance, and pulsing through the air the voice of
the criers could be heard, as they rode slowly round the circle
publishing the programme of the day.

"Looking over the camp towards the hills it is not difficult to imagine
one's self back in the old days," said Maynard. "I saw Sitting Bull
camped like this. See, here is the 'Soldier Lodge' or chief's
headquarters," and he pointed to a large, handsome tepee set in one of
the foci of the big ellipse.

Everywhere they went Curtis and his friends met with hearty greeting.
"Hoh--hoh! The Little Father!" the old men cried, and came to shake
hands, and the women smiled, looking up from their work. The little
chi