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INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

like the wind, almost two feet to the mare's one. The last fifty-yards of the course was run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail, making hideous grimaces and beckoning to the rider of the mare to come on.

" It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and straight race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, and that the Indians had only just returned from a visit to the Kickapoos in the Indian nation, whom he had easily cleaned out of six hundred ponies." ,

The Indian carries a short, stout loop of raw-hide at the pommel of his saddle, which forms an important part of his outfit. When he desires to throw himself on the side of his pony opposite an enemy, he passes this loop over his head and under the arm, and, with one leg still thrown over the saddle, is as completely at home as in his lodge, having both hands left free with which to use his bow and arrow. The women ride astride the ponies like the men.

Before coming to the greatest indoor amusement of the winter camp, the dance, it is proper to speak briefly of the musical instrument of the Indians. The drum or tom-tom serves them alike as fiddle, brass band, pipe organ, and jew's-harp. Formerly it consisted of a piece of skin stretched over a section cut from the trunk of a hollow tree, but, since the approach of civilization, the empty cheese box, with the skin over it, has driven out. all other rivals. When the head of this drum gets loose it is tightened by being wet and held over the fire, which is always kept burning at a dance for this special purpose.

The songs of the Indians, which accompany all their ceremonies and celebrations, are highly characteristic. The tunes are few and monotonous, but the words constantly vary. Every occasion gives rise to a new set of them. A band of warriors, returning from the war-path, regards the matter of embalming their exploits in an appropriate song as one of the highest importance. Many evenings on the way home are spent in the work of its composition, each man proposing a line and the whole