The hard ripe maize is also broken into small pieces between two stones, one or two grains at a time, the larger stone being placed on a skin, that the flying fragments may not be lost. This coarse meal is boiled into a mush called Wa-na-de. It is sometimes parched previously to being pounded, and the mush prepared from this description of meal is distinguished by the term Wa-jun-ga. With each of these two dishes, a portion of the small prepared intestines of the bison, called Ta-she-ba, are boiled, to render the food more sapid. Their pumpkins, Wat-tong, are boiled, or rather steamed, as the pot is filled with them cut in slices, with the addition of a very small quantity of water. But the greater number of these vegetables are cut into long slips, and, as well as the smaller intestines and stomach of the bison, cut in pieces, are interwoven as before mentioned into a kind of network. A singular description of food is made use of by some tribes of the Snake Indians, consisting chiefly, and sometimes wholly of a species of ant, (formica, Lin.) which is very abundant in the region in which they roam. The squaws go in the cool of the morning to the hillocks of these active insects, knowing that then they are assembled together in the greatest numbers. Uncovering the little mounds to a certain depth, the squaws scoop them up in their hands, and put them into a bag prepared for the purpose. When a sufficient number are obtained, they repair to the water, and cleanse the mass from all the dirt and small pieces of wood collected with them. The ants are then placed upon a flat stone, and by the pressure of a rolling-pin, are crushed together into a dense {196} mass, and rolled out like pastry. Of this substance a soup is prepared, which is relished by the Indians, but is not at all to the taste of white men. Whether or not this species of ant is analogous to the vachacos, which Humboldt speaks of, as furnishing food to the Indians of the Rio Negro and the Guainia, we have no opportunity of ascertaining. We could not learn that any one of the nations of the Missouri Indians are accused, even by their enemies, of eating human flesh from choice, or for the gratification of a horrible luxury: starvation alone can induce them to eat of it. An Ioway Indian, however, having killed an Osage, compelled some children of his own nation to eat of the uncooked flesh of the thigh of his victim. And a Sioux of the St. Peter's dried some of the flesh of a Chippeway whom he had killed, and presented it to some white men, who ate it without discovering the imposition. The Indians, like the Hottentots, Negroes, and monkeys, eat the lice which they detect in each others heads. The squaws search for these parasites; and we have often seen them thus occupied with activity, earnestness, and much success. One of them, who was engaged in combing the head of a white man, was asked why she did not eat the vermin; she replied, that "white men's lice are not good."