ins, with as spirited and
fearless a look as an old warrior's.

At one of the portages, we saw some graves of chiefs; the bodies
carefully laid in east-and-west lines, and the opening of the lodge
built over them was toward the sunrise. On a frame near the lodge were
stretched the hides of their horses, sacrificed to accompany them to
another world. The missionaries congratulate themselves that these
barbarous ceremonies are no longer observed, that the Indian is weaned
from his idea of the happy hunting-ground, and the sacrilegious thought
of ever meeting his horse again is eradicated from his mind. I thought
with satisfaction that the missionary really knows no more about the
future than the Indian, who seems ill adapted to the conventional idea
of heaven. For my part, I prefer to think of him, in the unknown future,
as retaining something of his earthly wildness and freedom, rather than
as a white-robed saint, singing psalms, and playing on a harp.

Between the Snake and the Spokane are several beautiful lakes. We met a
hunter coming from one of them, who had shot a white swan. He said he
found it circling round and round its dead mate, in so much distress
that he thought it was a kindness to kill it.

We passed two great smoking mounds, and, on alighting to investigate,
found that we were in the midst of a kamas-field, where a great many
Indian women and children were busy digging the root, and roasting it in
the earth.

Some of the old women wore the fringed skirt, made of cloth spun and
woven from the soft inner bark of the young cedar, which they used to
wear before blankets were introduced.

The Indians eat other roots beside the kamas, but that is the one on
which they chiefly depend. As soon as the snow is off the ground, they
begin to search for a little bulbous root they call the _pohpoh_. It
looks like a small onion, and has a dry, spicy taste. In May they get
the _spatlam_, or bitter-root. This is a delicate white root, that
dissolves in boiling, and forms a bitter jelly. The Bitter Root River
and Mountains get their name from this plant. In June comes the kamas.
It looks like a little hyacinth-bulb, and when roasted is as nice as a
chestnut. We have seen it in blossom, when its pale-blue flowers
covered the fields so closely that, at a little distance, we took it for
a lake. One of the women, seeing our curiosity as we watched them, drew
some of the bulbs out of the earth ovens, and handed them to us