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Show 208 THE INDIANS OF THE itself, rrrght account for their habits as long as they have their women with them to do the work. This, they think, is her sphere of life. I was amused one day at the conduct of an intelligent and rather fine- looking warrior, when asked by one of the ladies in our party if he loved his wife. The fellow understood and spoke English. The idea seemed quite absurd to him, and laughing and shaking his head, he-turned to his father- in- law, who was sitting next to him, and said something very amusing to him also, probably that the pale- faced women were big fools to think of their sex being loveable creatures. The men and boys are all good riders and prize their ponies very highly, though their ill- treatment of the animals seem rather inconsistent with real fondness for them. Their sporting arms and war weapons are of great variety, from the Henry repeating rifles and Colt's revolvers to their primitive weapons, the bow and arrow and the lance. The large majority are armed only with the latter. In their hands the bow and arrow is decidedly the most effec tive, and these they use with great skill, shooting their arrows in rapid succession, with remarkable accuracy, and a force that will send them entirely through the body of a buffalo. The arrows are sometimes poisoned, for war pur poses, by the tribes east of the mountains. This is done bv Couching their tips in the poison of the rattle- snake, and some vegetable poison they also use for the purpose, but I have been unable to ascertain what it is. Their bows vary in size. The Indians who always go mounted, have short ones, say three feet long, while some of the tribes in the West, who fight on foot, have them nearly twice as long. Each tribe makes its arrows of a particular kind of wood, or in a peculiar way, so that the tribe can be told by its arrows. Scalping is still practiced among all the tribes, and not only the warrior who is slain in battle, but the lonely Indian hunter or the poor immigrant, who falls by an arrow from the bow of his wily foe, have their bodies mutilated in the same way. Nor are the dead only subjected to this barbar- |