than twenty minutes. Then
they began to prepare the night meal, and to learn of their neighbors
the news of the day.

The habit of preparing food out of doors gave all the gypsy charm and
variety to their conduct. Continually I wanted Sir Walter Scott to
have been there. If such romantic sketches were suggested to him, by
the sight of a few gypsies, not a group near one of these fires but
would have furnished him material for a separate canvas. I was so
taken up with the spirit of the scene, that I could not follow out
the stories suggested by these weather-beaten, sullen, but eloquent
figures.

They talked a great deal, and with much, variety of gesture, so that I
often had a good guess at the meaning of their discourse. I saw
that, whatever the Indian may be among the whites, he is anything but
taciturn with his own people; and he often would declaim, or narrate
at length. Indeed, it is obvious, if only from the fables taken from
their stores by Mr. Schoolcraft, that these tribes possess great power
that way.

I liked very much, to walk or sit among them. With, the women I held
much communication by signs. They are almost invariably coarse and
ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with a peculiarly awkward
gait, and forms bent by burdens. This gait, so different from the
steady and noble step of the men, marks the inferior position
they occupy. I had heard much eloquent contradiction of this. Mrs.
Schoolcraft had maintained to a friend, that they were in fact as
nearly on a par with their husbands as the white woman with hers.
"Although," said she, "on account of inevitable causes, the Indian
woman is subjected to many hardships of a peculiar nature, yet her
position, compared with that of the man, is higher and freer than that
of the white woman. Why will people look only on one side? They either
exalt the red man into a demigod, or degrade him into a beast. They
say that he compels his wife to do all the drudgery, while he does
nothing but hunt and amuse himself; forgetting that upon his activity
and power of endurance as a hunter depends the support of his
family; that this is labor of the most fatiguing kind, and that it is
absolutely necessary that he should keep his frame unbent by burdens
and unworn by toil, that he may be able to obtain the means of
subsistence. I have witnessed scenes of conjugal and parental love
in the Indian's wigwam, from, which I have often, often thought the
educated white man,