Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/518

514 friend,' Amelu, a young man of 22 years, was in love all the time he was with him, and gave expression to many of the orthodox symptoms of that state in an undoubted fashion. The shamefaced way in which he would answer when asked why he had been away from the tent (in the neighborhood of an Indian encampment) so long the night before was a convincing fact. One evening he asked for a little money, and no amount of coaxing would for a long time induce him to say what he wanted it for. At last, however, in real lover fashion, he admitted that he wanted to buy some article or other to take to his lady friend, who was to put the finishing touches upon it. On this occasion Amelu blushed as much as the redskin can, and that is a good deal. Altogether, as an eminent Americanist once said, the Indian is a man, even as we are men. This the writer knows by actual experience, from the moment of his first arrival among the Kootenays, when halo naiha cumtux (Chinook jargon for 'I don't know') was the only conversation on their part, to the time when he sat with them, round the campfire and himself began the story-telling: Kānáqā Skínkūts, 'The Coyote was going along.'