thumb and first finger at right angles; this comes from an early custom among the Indians of carrying a lighted pipe before them when going on the war-path. The thumb and finger in that position are supposed to represent the angle of the bowl of the pipe and the stem. I visited a few of the Indian schools when I was in the Territory, and found the pupils quite learned. The teachers are not permitted to study the Indian languages, and their charges in consequence hear nothing but English, and so pick it up the more quickly. The young women who teach them seem to labor under certain disadvantages; one of them was reading the English lesson from a United States history intended for much older children--grown-up children, in fact--and explained that she had to order and select the school-books she used from a list furnished by the Government, and could form no opinion of its appropriateness until it arrived. [Illustration: A KIOWA MAIDEN] Some of the Indian parents are very proud of their children’s progress, and on beef-issue days visit the schools, and listen with great satisfaction to their children speaking in the unknown tongue. There were several in one of the school-rooms while I was there, and the teacher turned them out of their chairs to make room for us, remarking pleasantly that the Indians were accustomed to sitting around on the ground. She afterwards added to this by telling us that there was no sentiment in _her_, and that she taught Indians for the fifty dollars there was in it. The mother of one of the little boys was already crouching on the floor as we came in, or squatting on her heels, as they seem to be able to do without fatigue for any length of time. During the half-hour we were there, she never changed her position or turned her head to look at us, but kept her eyes fixed only on her son sitting on the bench above her. He was a very plump, clean, and excited little Indian, with his hair cut short, and dressed in a very fine pair of trousers and jacket, and with shoes and stockings. He was very keen to show the white visitors how well he knew their talk, and read his book with a masterful shaking of the head, as though it had no terrors for him. His mother, kneeling at his side on the floor, wore a single garment, and over that a dirty blanket strapped around her waist with a beaded belt. Her feet were bare, and her coarse hair hung down over her face and down her back almost to her waist in an unkempt mass. She supported her chin on one hand, and with the other hand, black and wrinkled, and with nails broken by cutting wood and harnessing horses and ploughing in the fields, brushed her hair back from before her eyes, and then touched her son’s arm wistfully, as a dog tries to draw his master’s eyes, and as though he were something fragile and fine. But he paid no attention to her whatsoever; he was very much interested in the lesson. She was the only thing I saw in the school-room. I