“During the past few days I have been feeling itchy; I believe we have become lousy from sitting on the blankets of these North Piegans.” Onesta replied without a smile: “I have had the same trouble, but got rid of mine by bathing in the river.” I had my own suspicions as to the cause of our discomfort, but, after this conversation, I imagined that lice were crawling in my hair and all over my body. To the joy of the entire camp, I hastened to the river, where I discovered sand as the real cause of my affliction. Onesta told me afterwards that few of the Blackfoot were troubled with vermin, but it was among the Crees and Gros Ventres. He said it made him feel uncomfortable to even go near the Crees. We had no regular hours for meals. The women cooked when it was convenient. It was customary for Indians to have only two meals a day, morning and evening. When we were on the road, we ate before sunrise and in the evening after our journey. In a permanent camp the morning meal might not come until noon; and if the women did not feel in the mood for cooking, they would omit it entirely. The time for our evening meal varied from five until nine; sometimes an entire day went by without any cooking. I adopted the Indian custom of eating dried meat or pemmican, whenever I felt hungry. Meat was their chief article of diet—boiled, roasted, or dried. They were especially fond of soups and meat stews. Their vegetables were generally roasted or baked. They peeled and split the stalks of wild parsnip, roasting them over the hot coals to bring out the juice. They baked the prairie turnip, also camas roots, which they put in a long hole three feet deep, in layers with grass and leaves between, and hot stones at the bottom. Then the hole was covered and a fire kept burning over it for two days and two nights. The women of our camp were continually at work, gathering wild berries and firewood, cooking, dressing skins, and making clothes. They had an ingenious way of getting dry branches for firewood, when they were out of reach on the big trees, breaking them off with a long pole with a crook at one end, which they called a “limb-catcher.” In gathering wild berries, a crowd of women and children generally went together. They struck the bushes with sticks and caught the berries in blankets, putting them into bags made from the whole skins of small animals or unborn calves. On hot days, they worked in the open, seated together under a large cowskin, which was spread over a tripod of poles as a sun shelter, making clothes, parfleches, and lodge covers. The day Onesta gave his Crow Water Ceremony, he asked me to help him in the singing. He began his drumming before sunrise to waken the people of the North Piegan camp; and made our women get up early to prepare the feast, which they cooked in a large kettle over an outside fire.