, many trees had been brought here and a good-sized
stockade, or "fort," had been erected. The structure was in imitation of
those forts, or posts, of the United States Army that marked the advance
of the pioneers into this vast Western country a good deal more than
half a century ago.

Daddy Bunker had told the children something about the development of
this part of the United States the evening before, and Russ and Rose, at
least, had understood and remembered. But just now they were all more
interested in the people they found here at the Oxbow Bend and in what
they were doing.

In one place were several covered wagons and the traveling kitchen. Here
the white members of the moving picture company lived. At the other side
was the encampment of Black Bear and his people. The Indian camp had
been brought to this place from the spot where the little Bunkers had
first visited it.

Black Bear and Little Elk and the other Indians welcomed the little
Bunkers very kindly. And on this occasion the Eastern children became
acquainted with the little Indians who had come down from the Indian
reservation in Oklahoma with their parents to work for the moving
picture company.

Rose and Russ felt they knew these Indian boys and girls already. You
see, they had seen more of the Indians than the other Bunker children
had. They found that Indian boys and girls played a good deal like white
children. At least, the dark-faced little girls had dolls made of
corncobs and wood, with painted faces, and they wrapped them in tiny
blankets. One little girl showed Rose her "best" doll which she had
carefully hidden away in a tent. This doll was a rosy-cheeked beauty
that could open and shut her eyes, and must have cost a good deal of
money. She told Rose that Chief Black Bear had given the doll to her for
learning Sunday-school texts.

The boys took Russ and Laddie down to the edge of the river and sailed
several toy canoes that the men of the tribe had fashioned for them. The
canoes were just like big Indian canoes, with high prows and sterns and
painted with targets. Besides these toys the Indian boys had bows and
arrows that were modeled much better than the bows and arrows Russ and
Laddie owned, and could shoot much farther.

When Russ tried the Indians' bow and arrows he was surprised at the
distance he could drive the arrow and how accurately he sent it.

"I guess you boys know how to make 'em right," he told Joshua Little
Elk, o