By this time we were beyond the outposts of civilization and I saw my first Indians. It was at the crossing of a stream. I cannot now recall the name of it, but it does not really matter. The Indians belonged to the Kaw tribe and there were a great many of them. Trees of some sort skirted the banks of the shallow stream and among them, scattered about, was fully a hundred teepees. Someone, resorting to an easy answer, told me that it was a camp meeting. As I think of it now, I know that it was probably a government pay day. Some of the Tribes were even then, receiving amenities, so they were peaceful. They accepted and spent, the government money, and grumbled only to themselves. I saw the Indians squatting in the grass around a raised platform. I took it to be a pulpit and argued to myself that after all, Indians could not be so very bad. How could they be, and be so very pious. I remember how deep and rich the grass was. I thought it a very pretty spot, but I did not enjoy being there. Father had been an Indian fighter and had served through the Black Hawk War. I had listened to his vivid, thrilling stories of Indian treachery, massacre, and warfare, while I sat as closely to him as I could and shivered at the dark shadows in the room. Here were Indians all around us, they might be pious and peaceful and all that, but I was not entirely satisfied or pleased about it. I remember seeing a couple of young squaws, who were busily occupied with fine tooth combs. At each stroke through their long black hair they examined the combs intently and dipped them from time to time in a kettle of boiling water. I was curious about it and asked Mother what it meant. But after we lived on the mission farm with Indians all about us, I learned a great deal about the efficacy of a fine toothed comb. I also learned that fish berries steeped in vinegar were even better than the comb when one's hair was as long and heavy as mine was. The Indian women and children did not appear so very different from anyone else. In fact, their colored calico dresses looked rather good, I thought, and in comparison, my little red and black checked home spun dress seemed quite drab and commonplace. That same red and black checked dress, by the time we had reached our journey's end, had given place to one made from a wagon sheet. The Indians, too, as we traveled on, wore less, very much less, even less than that. But where ever we found them, the Indians wore a great many beads, loops and loops of them, and bear's claws, and elk teeth. Often they wore very little else. Walt Davies Monmouth, OR