Washingguhsahba, conversing familiarly with a Frenchman, who had long resided in the Omawhaw village, observed that the white people, being in the habit of reading books with the desire of acquiring knowledge, probably knew the cause of the difference of colour which exists between themselves and {53} the Indian; he therefore requested information from the Frenchman on this subject. The latter, assuming an air of great gravity, assured him that the cause was very well known, and was no other than that the Indian was formed of red horse-dung. The chief, with every appearance of candour, which, however, he did not feel, instantly placed his hand on the arm of his companion, and replied that this observation was a convincing proof of the great knowledge of the white people, and that they were perfectly familiar with the early operations of the Master of Life. He had no doubt, he said, that they were equally well informed as to the matter out of which they were themselves formed; but if he, a poor ignorant Indian, with no knowledge but his own, might venture to give his opinion, he would say, that they were formed of the excrement of the dog, baked white in the prairie. They sometimes employ an indirect method of communicating information, and of explaining some particular acts of their own, which may have been erroneously construed by others. Several Omawhaws, accompanied by a Frenchman, one day passed our cantonment, on their way to the trading house, with a considerable quantity of jerked meat. On their return they visited us; when one of them, who amused himself by turning over the leaves of a book in search of pictures, being asked by a squaw, in a jocular manner, what the book said, replied, "It tells me, that when we were taking our meat to the trading house, we wished to present some of it to white people on the way, but that the Frenchman would not permit us to do so." This remark explained the reason of their having offered us no meat. An Indian, observing that one of our men, when cutting wood, uttered the interjection _hah!_ at each blow with the axe, smiled; and asked if it assisted him, or added force to the blow. {54} The Kinnecanick, or, as the Omawhaws call it, _Ninnegahe_, mixed or made tobacco, which they use for smoking in their pipes, is composed partly of tobacco, and partly of the leaves of the sumack (rhus glabrum); but many prefer to the latter ingredient, the inner bark of the red willow (cornus sericea); and when neither of the two latter can be obtained, the inner bark of the arrow wood (viburnum) is substituted for them. These two ingredients are well dried over the fire, and comminuted together by friction between the hands. Their pipes are neatly made of the red indurated clay, which they procure from the red pipestone branch of the Sioux river.[26] The mass is readily cut with a common knife.