Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/298

Rh women. The women are less painted, and with better taste than the men, generally with merely one deep red little spot in the middle of the cheeks, and the parting of the hair on the forehead is died purple. I like their appearance better than that of the men. They have a kind smile, and often a very kind expression; as well as a something in the glance which is much more human: but they are evidently merely their husbands' beasts of burden. There goes an Indian with his proud step, bearing aloft his plumed head. He carries only his pipe and when he is on a journey, perhaps a long staff in his hand. After him, with bowed head, and stooping shoulders, follows his wife, bending under the burden which she bears on her back, and which a band, passing over the forehead, enables her to support. Above the burden peeps forth a little round-faced child, with beautiful, dark eyes, it is her “papoose,” as these children are called. Its little body is fastened by swaddling clothes upon its back on a board, which is to keep its body straight; and it lives, and is fed, and sleeps, and grows, always fastened to the board. When the child can walk it is still carried for a long time on the mother's back in the folds of her blanket. Nearly all the Indians which I have seen are of the Sioux tribe.

Governor Ramsay drove me yesterday to the Falls of St. Anthony. They are some miles from St. Paul's. These falls close the Mississippi to steam-boats and other vessels. From these falls to New Orleans the distance is two thousand two hundred miles. A little above the falls the river is again navigable for two hundred miles, but merely for small vessels, and that not without danger.

The Falls of St. Anthony have no considerable height, and strike me merely as the cascade of a great mill-dam. They fall abruptly over a stratum of a tufa rock, which they sometimes break and wash down in great masses. The country around is neither grand, nor particularly