A tall chief with a pipe in his mouth, wearing a scarlet shawl, fanned himself with a lady’s fan of black spangles and gauze, and as he fanned he frowned at us, muttering at our levity in talking during the sacred ceremonies. He only needed a rose behind his ear to make a gaunt Carmen of him, temper and all. His eyes fell menacingly on Toby’s camera, which she had been fingering, and Toby-wise she turned and sauntered off as if she hadn’t seen him, though I imagine her knees shook. From the not too friendly Indians we could get no further information of the meaning of the dance, but later I discovered we had been fortunate enough to witness the Sun Dance. During the winter, when sickness falls upon a relative, some Indian will vow to organize this dance, if health should return to the sick one. The whole tribe comes to take part or to witness the dance. The participants refrain from food or drink for three days, sustained to their exertion by marvelous nervous energy and real religious fervor. Before the government forbade the practise it was their custom to cut slits in their breasts on the third day of the dance, and insert rawhide ropes, which they tied to the tree, throwing themselves back and forth regardless of the torture, until the rawhide broke through the flesh. After the adobe huts and hogans of the Pueblos and Navajos, we were delighted by the symmetrical snowwhite tepee of the Shoshone, who have made not only an art but a ceremony of tepee building. Two poles are first placed on the ground, butts together. Then two poles of equal length are placed in a reversed position. A rope of pine tree fibre is then woven in and out, over and under the four poles near the top, knotted securely, with long ends hanging. The old custom prescribed laying out the camp in half moon shape, each doorway facing the point where the sun first appears on the horizon, shifting with the season. The camp’s location determined, the squaws raise the poles slowly, singing the song of the tepee pole, so timed that it comes to an end with the upright position of the pole. Two women then raise the tent covering, lacing it with carved and polished twigs. Two smoke flaps above the entrance, held in place by other poles, are moved as the wind varies, to draw the smoke rising within the tent. No habitation is more knowingly and simply devised than the tepees, which are both warm and well ventilated even in winter. It is only when the Indians are transplanted to the white man’s houses that they close doors and windows, light great fires, and soon become soft, and fall easy victims of the white plague. [Illustration: A SHOSHONE TEPEE, FORT HALL, IDAHO. Each step in their construction follows a well-ordered plan.] The Shoshone chiefs made no objection as Toby snapped a beautiful tepee with an Indian pony tethered near, but when she smoothly circled it upon an interested group of gaudy giants, one of them, an Isaiah in a white robe, touched her on the arm.