ons.
The part around the door is painted to represent a man's face, and the
entrance is through the mouth. Within, he finds a spacious room
perhaps eighty or a hundred feet long by twenty wide, with rows of
rude bunks rising tier above tier on either side. In the centre are
the stones and ashes of the hearth; above is an aperture in the roof
for the escape of smoke; around the hearth mats are spread to sit
upon; the bare ground, hard and trodden, forms the only floor, and the
roof is made of boards that have been split out with mallet and
wedges.

Cecil enters and stands a moment in silence; then the head of the
house advances and welcomes him. The best mat is spread for him to sit
upon; food is brought,--pounded fish, nuts, and berries, and a kind of
bread made of roots cooked, crushed together, and cut in slices when
cold. All this is served on a wooden platter, and he must eat whether
hungry or not; for to refuse would be the grossest affront that could
be offered a Willamette host, especially if it were presented by his
own hands. The highest honor that a western Oregon Indian could do his
guest was to wait on him instead of letting his squaw do it. The
Indian host stands beside Cecil and says, in good-humored hospitality,
"Eat, eat much," nor is he quite pleased if he thinks that his visitor
slights the offered food. When the guest can be no longer persuaded to
eat more, the food is removed, the platter is washed in water, and
dried with a wisp of twisted grass; a small treasure of tobacco is
produced from a little buckskin pocket and a part of it carefully
mixed with dried leaves;[10] the pipe is filled and smoked. Then, and
not till then, may the Indian host listen to the talk of the white
man.

So it was in lodge after lodge; he must first eat, be it ever so
little. Two centuries later, the Methodist and Congregational
missionaries found themselves confronted with the same oppressive
hospitality among the Rocky Mountain Indians.[11] Nay, they need not
visit a wigwam; let them but stroll abroad through the village, and if
they were popular and the camp was well supplied with buffalo-meat,
messengers would come with appalling frequency, bearing the laconic
invitation, "Come and eat;" and the missionary must go, or give
offence, even though he had already gone to half a dozen wigwams on
the same errand. There is a grim humor in a missionary's eating fresh
buffalo-meat in the cause of religion until he is like to