behind them, all conducting
themselves in the most sedate and orderly manner.

Mr. Laird and the other Commissioners were seated along the open
front of the tent, and one could not but be impressed by the
scene, set as it was in a most beautiful environment of distant
mountains, waters, forests and meadows, all sweet and primeval,
and almost untouched by civilized man. The whites of The region
had also turned out to witness the scene, which, though lacking
the wild aspect of the old assemblages on the plains in the early
'seventies, had yet a character of its own of great interest,
and of the most hopeful promise.

The crowd of Indians ranged before the marquee had lost all
semblance of wildness of the true type. Wild men they were,
in a sense, living as they did in the forest and on their great
waters. But it was plain that these people had achieved, without
any treaty at all, a stage of civilization distinctly in advance
of many of our treaty Indians to the south after twenty-five
years of education. Instead of paint and feathers, the scalp-lock,
the breech-clout, and the buffalo-robe, there presented itself a
body of respectable-looking men, as well dressed and evidently
quite as independent in their feelings as any like number of
average pioneers in the East. Indeed, I had seen there, in my
youth, many a time, crowds of white settlers inferior to these
in sedateness and self-possession. One was prepared, in this
wild region of forest, to behold some savage types of men;
indeed, I craved to renew the vanished scenes of old. But,
alas! one beheld, instead, men with well-washed, unpainted
faces, and combed and common hair; men in suits of ordinary
"store-clothes," and some even with "boiled" if not laundered
shirts. One felt disappointed, almost defrauded. It was not
what was expected, what we believed we had a right to expect,
after so much waggoning and tracking and drenching, and river
turmoil and trouble. This woeful shortcoming from bygone days
attended other aspects of the scene. Instead of fiery oratory and
pipes of peace--the stone calumets of old--the vigorous arguments,
the outbursts of passion, and close calls from threatened violence,
here was a gathering of commonplace men smoking briar-roots,
with treaty tobacco instead of "weed," and whose chiefs replied
to Mr. Laird's explanations and offers in a few brief and sensible
statements, varied by vigorous appeals to the common sense and
judgment, rather