Two women were laboring assiduously at a large bison skin at the door of the tent, scraping, pounding, and rubbing it, until it was white as a piece of cotton, but paying little attention to her, save now and then a stolen glance up from their work. Then Lissa was attracted to the movements of the chief, who took a long-handled, red-clay pipe and filled it from several bone cups, filled apparently with a variety of herbs, then lighted it, and after taking two or three whiffs passed it to the Indian at his right, and thus it was handed around the circle. The herbs gave out a pungent odor as they burned, which to Lissa was sickening, and she was thankful that she was passed by and only Nathan invited to smoke with them their _calumet_. The chief then took another of the odd-looking cups, and filling it with a kind of chowdered, dried meat gave it to Lissa. She was embarrassed, for she dared not refuse it, yet shuddered at the thought of tasting it. Nathan answered her imploring looks by laughing and explaining to the donor that the white squaw was from the land of the rising sun and had not learned to appreciate such a treat. The chief, too, smiled, a little contemptuously Lissa thought, at her ignorance of this dainty, and called to one of the squaws to bring her corn. Lissa was glad to accept the shining ear of maize, roasted within its husk to an appetizing brown, and she ate it with a relish, much to the satisfaction of the Indians and the woman who brought it. In the mean time, Nathan, his eyes twinkling with amusement, was carrying on an animated conversation with one of the Indians in their dialect, and gesticulating toward Lissa, as if she might be furnishing the topic of discussion. She felt relieved when her husband arose and proposed their departure. When they were again in their saddles and careening over the flower-strewn sward Nathan explained that the Indian was attempting to bargain for the “white chuppet,” offering for her his three squaws, two ponies, a wagon, some wampum—in fact, all of his possessions. “And you were really bartering me before my face, and I ignorant of it?” said Lissa. “Well, I like that!” “Yes, and the fellow was terribly in earnest too. He thought you would make a good wife to hoe his corn and work for him,” laughed Nathan. “Oh, the horrid creature! How my ideal of the ‘noble redman’ has fallen since coming here.” And she quoted: “Black and glossy were her ringlets, As the tresses of the sea; Gloomy as the starless midnight, Pretty star-eyed Estollee.” “O Nate, where are they, those beautiful children of the forest, whom Longfellow and other poets dreamed of? The squaws are positively ugly with their tangled hair, narrow eyes, high cheek bones, nakedness and dirt. The men are not bad. They are at least straight and symmetrical,” she added.