mourning for those who had lost their
lives to save their friends. Their relations cried very pitifully over the
dead; and early the next day their bodies were carried to the top of a hill
near the village, and buried there.

After the mourning for the dead was ended, the people had dances over the
scalps that had been taken from the enemy, rejoicing over the victory. Men
and women blackened their faces, and danced in a circle about the scalps,
held on poles; and old men and old women shouted the names of those men who
had been the bravest in the fight. We little boys looked on and sang and
danced by ourselves away from the circle.

It was soon after this that my uncle made me a bow and some blunt-headed
arrows, with which he told me I should hunt little birds, and should learn
to kill food, to help support my mother and sisters, as a man ought to do.
With these arrows I used to practice shooting, trying to see how far I
could shoot, how near I could send the arrow to the mark I shot at; and
afterwards, as I grew a little older, hunting in the brush along the river,
or on the prairie not far from the camp with the other little boys. We
hunted the blackbirds, or the larks, or the buffalo birds that fed among
the horses' feet, or the other small birds that lived among the bushes and
trees in the bottom. If I killed a little bird, as sometimes I did, my
mother cooked it and we ate it.

[Illustration: HUNTING IN THE BRUSH ALONG THE RIVER]

This was a happy time for me. We little boys played together all the time.
Sometimes the older boys allowed us to go with them, when they went far
from the village, to hunt rabbits, and when they did this, sometimes they
told us to carry back the rabbits that they had killed; and I remember that
once I came back with the heads of three rabbits tucked under my belt,
killed by my cousin, who was older than I. Then we used to go out and watch
the men and older boys playing at sticks; and we had little sticks of our
own, and our older brothers and cousins made us wheels; and we, too, played
the stick game among ourselves, rolling the wheel and chasing it as hard as
we could; but, for the most part, we threw our sticks at marks, trying to
learn how to throw them well, and how to slide them far over the ground.

[Illustration: WATCH THE MEN AND OLDER BOYS PLAYING AT STICKS]

I remember another thing--a sad thing--that happened when I was a very
little boy.

It was winter; the snow lay dee