They hunted the buffalo in the same wasteful way as the southern plainsmen, from whom they probably learnt the trick of driving the beasts into an enclosure. They made some progress in a few of the arts. Many of them tried their hands at pottery; they also plaited bark and other fibres into baskets. They decorated articles of hide with geometrical designs, in paint or porcupine quill; their famous bead-work only came into fashion when white men gave them glass beads in trade. The beaten copper with which they fastened the plaits of their long black hair, they got from tribes who found it on the shore of Lake Superior. They could not write, but they could draw. They drew maps, of their land and water trails, on bits of birch-bark. They painted figures of animals on the outside of their skin tents. They would hunt a band of other Indians or a herd of buffalo with the same ingenuity and fierce delight. Having spent all their energy in this violent collection of human scalps and buffalo meat, they dropped into idleness. But time did not hang heavy on their hands. They were never bored by lack of occupation; they enjoyed doing nothing, as a cow enjoys chewing the cud. They smoked dry willow-bark, when they could not get tobacco, in carved stone pipes. They used no strong drink, till the white man brought it to them. They did not lack the pleasures of imagination; endless and agreeable were the hours they spent telling and hearing tales of enchantment and mythical legends of the past, many of which I have borrowed for my “New World Fairy Book.” CHAPTER III The White Man Comes Exploring ONE DAY a strange piece of news came to an Indian prairie camp. The men and women, squatting on the grass, and smoking their willow-bark, discussed the great news, and even the children stopped their play to listen and wonder. A new kind of man had been seen, far away in the south,—a light-skinned man. How did the news come? The scattered Indian tribes had little to do with each other, except when they fought, and in a fight they generally killed all the men they conquered who did not escape. But they often kept the women and made wives of them.