recognized, and many of the gaping multitude commenced yelping; some were stamping off in the jarring dance, others were singing, and others again were crying; hundreds covered their mouth with their hands and were mute; others, indignant, drove their spears frightfully into the ground, and some threw a reddened arrow at the sun and went home to their wigwams. “The pictures seen, the next curiosity was to see the man who made them, and I was called forth. Readers, if you have any imagination, save me the trouble of painting this scene. I stepped forth and was instantly hemmed in in the throng. Women were gazing, and warriors and braves were offering me their hands, whilst little boys and girls by dozens were struggling through the crowd to touch me with the ends of their fingers, and while I was engaged from the waist upwards in fending off the throng and shaking hands my legs were assailed (not unlike the nibbling of little fish when I have been standing in deep water) by children who were creeping between the legs of the bystanders for the curiosity or honour of touching me with the end of their finger. The eager curiosity and expression of astonishment with which they gazed upon me plainly showed that they looked upon me as some strange and unaccountable being. They pronounced me the greatest _medicine-man_ in the world, for they said I had made a _living being_; they said they could see their chief alive in two places--those that I had made were a little alive; they could see their eyes move, could see them smile and laugh; they could certainly speak if they should try, and they must therefore have some life in them. “The squaws generally agreed that they had discovered life enough in them to render my _medicine_ too great for the Mandans, saying that such an operation could not be performed without taking away from the original something of his existence, which I put in the picture, and they could see it move, see it stir. “This curtailing of the natural existence for the purpose of instilling life into the secondary one they decided to be an useless and destructive operation, and one which was calculated to do great mischief in their happy community, and they commenced a mournful and doleful chant against me, crying and weeping bitterly through the village, proclaiming me a most dangerous man, one who could make living persons by looking at them, and at the same time could, as a matter of course, destroy life in the same way, if I chose; that my medicine was dangerous to their lives and that I must leave the village immediately; that bad luck would happen to those whom I painted, and that when they died they would never sleep quiet in their graves.