t under Pharaoh. It was during this period of
hopeless resignation, gloomily awaiting--what, no Indian could even
guess--that his hardy, yet sensitive, organization gave way. Who can
wonder at it? His home was a little, one-roomed log cabin, about twelve
by twenty feet, mud-chinked, containing a box stove and a few sticks of
furniture. The average cabin has a dirt floor and a dirt roof. They are
apt to be overheated in winter, and the air is vitiated at all times,
but especially at night, when there is no ventilation whatever. Families
of four to ten persons lived, and many still live, in these huts.
Fortunately the air of the plains is dry, or we should have lost them
all!

Remember, these people were accustomed to the purest of air and water.
The teepee was little more than a canopy to shelter them from the
elements; it was pitched every few days upon new, clean ground. Clothing
was loose and simple, and frequent air and sun baths, as well as baths
in water and steam, together with the use of emollient oils, kept the
skin in perfect condition. Their food was fresh and wholesome, largely
wild meat and fish, with a variety of wild fruits, roots, and grain, and
some cultivated ones. At first they could not eat the issue bacon, and
on ration days one might see these strips of unwholesome-looking fat
lying about on the ground where they had been thrown on the return trip.
Flour, too, was often thrown away before the women had learned to make
bread raised with cheap baking-powder and fried in grease. But the
fresh meat they received was not enough to last until the next ration
day. There was no end of bowel trouble when they were forced by
starvation to swallow the bacon and ill-prepared bread. Water, too, was
generally hauled from a distance with much labor, and stood about in
open buckets or barrels for several days.

As their strength waned, they made more fire in the stove and sat over
it, drinking rank coffee and tea that had boiled all day on the same
stove. After perspiring thus for hours, many would go out into the
bitter cold of a Dakota winter with little or no additional clothing,
and bronchitis and pneumonia were the inevitable result. The uncured
cases became chronic and led straight to tuberculosis in its various
forms.

Furthermore, the Indian had not become in any sense immune to disease,
and his ignorance placed no check upon contagion and infection. Even the
simpler children's diseases, such as measles,