Mr. Redman, the agent at the Kettle River railroad station, called my attention to the fact that old Batice is singularly disfigured. He was born without thumbs or big toes. The fingers and remaining toes resemble birds' claws. Two of the fingers of each hand and two of the toes on each foot are united to the tips but have distinct nails. Of his four children three are disfigured like the father. His grandchildren are many of them worse than himself, one having but one finger.
INDIAN FAITH CURE.
A woman at Pokegama was badly burned by the explosion of gunpowder while she was putting it in a flask. Her face became terribly swollen and black. The missionaries did what they could for her, but thought she must die. After two days the Indian doctors held a medicine dance for her benefit. After they had gone through with their magic arts the woman arose, and, without any assistance, walked around distributing presents to the performers of the ceremony. It was truly wonderful. She recovered rapidly.
INDIAN GRAVES.
The Chippewas bury their dead much as the whites do. The body is deposited in a grave and covered with earth. A low wooden covering, somewhat like the roof of a house, is reared above it, the gables resting on the ground. The roof is covered with white or bleached muslin, and surmounted by a board cross. An aperture about six inches square is left in each end of the structure. The head of the grave is toward the west, and here are deposited offerings of fruits and trinkets of various kinds. We found at one grave a broken saucer, an oyster can filled with blueberries, a large red apple, and a pair of old shoes. Friends of the deceased visit the graves for one or two years, renewing their tributes of affection, and bringing offerings of fruit according to the season, and various foods, from acorns to dried venison, but in time these visits are discontinued and the graves are neglected and forgotten.
STOICISM OF THE INDIAN.
On the banks of the Kettle river a five-year-old boy burned his hand badly. The mother, after examining the wound, decided that it was incurable, ordered the boy to place his hand upon a block, and by a single blow from a common hatchet severed it from the wrist. The boy endured the suffering without flinching.
Old Batice, alias "Kettle," lived on Kettle river in 1880. Counting by moons he claims to have lived there ninety-nine years. He is certainly very old. He says that he has always been a friend to the whites, and that in the Sioux outbreak of 1862 he counseled his people to remain quiet; that he was the enemy of the Sioux, three of whom he had killed and scalped. To commemorate his warlike deeds in slaughtering his enemies, he wore three large eagle feathers in his gray hair. He claims to be half French.
AN INDIAN DANCE.
In June, 1880, the Indians were practicing a new dance near the Kettle River railroad station, part of which it was my privilege to witness. The dance house was a rudely constructed pole frame covered with birch bark, fastened down with willow twigs. About thirty dancers, male and female, and of all ages, were crowded in the dance house, sweating, grunting, hopping and bounding at the tap of a deer skin drumhead, and the "chi-yi-chi-yi-chi-hoo" of a quartette of boys and girls, squatted in a corner of the bark house. The din was incessant, the chant of the singers, or howlers, monotonous and wearisome, yet the dancers stepped and bounded to their rude music as readily as do civilized dancers to the more exquisite music of stringed instruments. This dance was the same that so frightened the Burnett county people, and required at least ten days for its complete performance. A few minutes' observation amply satisfied us, and we gladly withdrew.