Southern Seas--Alice M. Guernsey--Women's Home Missionary Society,
Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

With soft, Insistent regularity came the beat of the tom-tom over
the hills, calling the Indians to the Medicine Lodge dance. There
was something weirdly fascinating in the reiterated turn, turn,
that carried almost a hypnotic power as hour after hour it called
through the stillness.

Wrapped in their bright blankets--men on horseback--whole families in
wagons--the Indians passed round the curve of the road, to disappear
in the big, open depression just beyond, where the Medicine Lodge was
in camp. There was a group of rounded tents in which families and guests
were prepared to live the four days and nights during which the rites
of the dance lasted. It was an untidy and disorderly camp, with children
and dogs tumbling about--women kneeling to arrange small strips of meat
to cook over the bit of wood fire on the ground, or attending to other
home-keeping matters. Dirt, flies, children, and dogs were everywhere.

A few feet away stretched the long tent where the ceremony of the
dance was to take place. They had taken their places and were
ready for the ceremony--mostly men, a few women, a little girl of
nine years, a young mother of twenty whose baby two weeks old was
held by an aged grandmother, who crouched at the end.

All were dressed in beaded finery. All wore moccasins--some men
had long beaded stoles--others wonderful beaded waistcoats. The
women wore long beaded hair ornaments reaching almost to the