It was now humming with life. The warriors were collected in small knots of five or six, and, by their vehement gestures, were apparently engaged in earnest conversation. The children were rolling and tumbling in the dirt; the squaws were busily engaged. Some were bringing from their lodges large leather sacks of shelled corn; others were spreading it out to dry, upon the leather of their buffalo-skin tents, which had been stretched out upon the ground. Others were cleansing from it the decayed kernels and packing it up in small sacks of a whitish undressed leather, resembling parchment. These were then deposited in cache-holes[D] for a winter’s store. [D] The _Cache_, is a large hole dug in the ground like a cistern. It is narrow at the top (about four feet in diameter) but wider as it descends, until its form somewhat resembles that of a jug. It will contain about an hundred bushels of corn. Upon leaving their villages, the Indians deposit the corn which is to serve for their winter’s store in granaries of this description, and cover the apertures with earth, so that it is impossible, for a person unacquainted with their exact position, to discover the entrance. The name _Cache_ is given by the French traders who derive it from the word _cacher_ (to conceal.) At a distance from the village, a band of females were slowly wending along the top of one of the low prairie ridges, to their daily labour in the small plantations of corn. These are scattered in every direction round the village, wherever a spot of rich, black soil, gives promise of a bountiful harvest. Some of them are as much as eight miles distant from the town. There is a fearful uncertainty hanging round the lives of these females. At the rising of the sun they depart to their toil, often never to return. They are constantly exposed to the attacks of lurking foes, who steal down upon their villages, to cut off stragglers. They come and disappear with equal silence and celerity. Their presence is unknown, until the long absence of a friend, or a mutilated body, found sometimes after the lapse of several days, conveys to their friends a thrilling token, that the hand of the destroyer has been busied among them, and the hour of vengeance has passed.