In decorating skins or robes the Arikara Indians boil the tail of the beaver, thus obtaining a viscous fluid which is thin glue. The figures are first drawn in outline with a piece of beef-rib, or some other flat bone, the edge only being used after having been dipped into the liquor. The various pigments to be employed in the drawing are then mixed with some of the same liquid, in separate vessels, when the various colors are applied to the objects by means of a sharpened piece of wood or bone. The colored mixture adheres firmly to the original tracing in glue. When similar colors are to be applied to wood, the surface is frequently pecked or slightly incised to receive the color more readily. Jacques Cartier, in Hakluyt (_b_), reports the Indian women of the Bay of Chaleur as smearing the face with coal dust and grease. A small pouch, discovered on the Yellowstone river in 1873, which had been dropped by some fleeing hostile Sioux, contained several fragments of black micaceous iron. The latter had almost the appearance and consistence of graphite, so soft and black was the result upon rubbing with it. It had evidently been used for decorating the face as war-paint. Mr. Wm. H. Dall (_a_), treating of the remains found in the mammalian layers in the Amakuak cave, Unalaska, remarks: In the remains of a woman’s work-basket, found in the uppermost layer in a cave, were bits of this resin [from the bark of pine or spruce driftwood], evidently carefully treasured, with a little birch-bark case (the bark also derived from drift logs) containing pieces of soft hematite, graphite, and blue carbonate of copper, with which the ancient seamstress ornamented her handiwork. The same author reports (_f_): The coloration of wooden articles with native pigments is of ancient origin, but all the more elaborate instances that have come to my knowledge bore marks of comparatively recent origin. The pigments used were blue carbonates of iron and copper; the green fungus, or peziza, found in decayed birch and alder wood; hematite and red chalk; white infusorial or chalky earth; black charcoal, graphite, and micaceous ore of iron. A species of red was sometimes derived from pine bark or the cambium of the ground willow. Stephen Powers (_a_) states that the Shastika women “smear their faces all over daily with choke-cherry juice, which gives them a bloody, corsair aspect.”