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BOOK III.

THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES.

CHAPTER I.

THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE.

My full defiance, hate, and scorn.

SCOTT.

T T is the day after the departure of the runners to Grey went out into the wilderness. Smoke is curling slowly upward from an Indian camp on the prairie not far from the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Fifteen or twenty cone-shaped lodges, each made of mats stretched on a frame-work of poles, compose the village. It swarms with wolfish-looking dogs and dirty, unclad children. Heaps of refuse, heads and feet of game, lie decaying among the wigwams, taint ing the air with their disgusting odor. Here and there an ancient withered specimen of humanity sits in the sun, absorbing its rays with a dull animal- like sense of enjoyment, and a group of warriors lie idly talking. Some of the squaws are preparing food, boiling it in water-tight willow baskets by filling them with water and putting in hot stones. 1 Horses are
 * call the great council, eight years since Cecil

1 See Bancroft s " Native Races," vol. i.,