much. For a day and a night we lay under the snow. Uncle stuck a long
pole beside us to tell us when the storm was over. We had plenty of
buffalo robes and the snow kept us warm, but we found it heavy. After
a time, it became packed and hollowed out around our bodies, so that we
were as comfortable as one can be under those circumstances.

The next day the storm ceased, and we discovered a large herd of
buffaloes almost upon us. We dug our way out, shot some of the
buffaloes, made a fire and enjoyed a good dinner.

I was now an exile as well as motherless; yet I was not unhappy. Our
wanderings from place to place afforded us many pleasant experiences and
quite as many hardships and misfortunes. There were times of plenty
and times of scarcity, and we had several narrow escapes from death. In
savage life, the early spring is the most trying time and almost all the
famines occurred at this period of the year.

The Indians are a patient and a clannish people; their love for one
another is stronger than that of any civilized people I know. If this
were not so, I believe there would have been tribes of cannibals among
them. White people have been known to kill and eat their companions in
preference to starving; but Indians--never!

In times of famine, the adults often denied themselves in order to make
the food last as long as possible for the children, who were not able to
bear hunger as well as the old. As a people, they can live without food
much longer than any other nation.

I once passed through one of these hard springs when we had nothing
to eat for several days. I well remember the six small birds which
constituted the breakfast for six families one morning; and then we had
no dinner or supper to follow! What a relief that was to me--although I
had only a small wing of a small bird for my share! Soon after this, we
came into a region where buffaloes were plenty, and hunger and scarcity
were forgotten.

Such was the Indian's wild life! When game was to be had and the sun
shone, they easily forgot the bitter experiences of the winter before.
Little preparation was made for the future. They are children of Nature,
and occasionally she whips them with the lashes of experience, yet they
are forgetful and careless. Much of their suffering might have been
prevented by a little calculation.

During the summer, when Nature is at her best, and provides abundantly
for the savage, it seems to me that no life is happier