Now, if my reader has failed to see the picture I have drawn of Indian dances, I promise you that, before our journey is ended, I will try again a similar scene, where the music of tall pine-trees and tumbling torrents from hoary mountains will give my pencil brighter hues and my hand a steadier, finer touch. The arrival of our train at the camp of Kisk-ke-kosh called out whatever of finery had not been on exhibition with the welcoming party who had come out to meet us. And when the sun had gone down behind the Iowa prairies the dances were repeated on a larger scale. The following day we were paid off and signed the vouchers. Don’t know that it was intended; don’t know that it was not; but I do remember that we were allowed the same number of days in which to return that we had occupied in going out, although on our homeward journey we passed each day two or three camps made on the outward journey. I ventured to make some remark on the subject, suggesting the injustice of taking pay for more time than was required for us to reach home, and a nice kind of a churchman, one who could drive oxen without swearing, said in reply, “Boys should be seen and not heard, you little fool!” He snubbed me then, but I never forgot the deep, earnest resolve I made to thrash him for this insult when “_I got to be a man._” But, poor fellow, he went years ago where boys _may_ be heard as well as seen, and I forgive him. We met the rushing crowds who were going to the “New Purchase”; so eager, indeed, that, like greedy vultures which circle round a dying charger and then alight upon some eminence near, or poise themselves in mid air, impatient for his death, sometimes swoop down upon him before his heart has ceased to beat. So had these emigrants encamped along the frontier-line, impatient for the hour when the red man should pull down his wigwam, put out his council-fires, collect his squaws, his pappooses, and his ponies, and turn his back upon the civilization they were bringing to take the place of these untamed and savage ceremonies. While the council-fire was dying out, another was being kindled whose ruddy light was to illuminate the faces, and warm the hands of those who, following the westward star of empire, had come to inherit the land, and build altars wherefrom should go up thanks to Him who smiled when he created the “beautiful valley” of the Iowa. How changed the scene! Then the gray smoke from Indian lodge rose slowly up and floated leisurely away. Now from furnace-blast it bursts out in volume black, and settles down over foundry and farm, city and town, unless, indeed, the Great Spirit sends fierce tempests, as an omen of his wrath, at the sacrilege done to the red man’s home. _Then_ the forest stood entire, like harp-strings whereon the Great Spirit might utter tones to soothe their stormy souls, or rouse them to deeds in vindication of rights he had bequeathed.