held, at which all the chiefs and all the hunters assist. They first choose a band of warriors to hinder the hunters from leaving camp, either alone or in detached companies, lest the bisons be disturbed, and thus be driven away from the encampment. The law against this is extremely severe; not only all the Indians of the camp must conform to it, but it reaches to all travelers, even when they are ignorant of the encampment or do not know that there is a hunt in contemplation. Should they frighten the animals, they are also punishable; however, those of the camp are more rigorously chastised in case they transgress the regulation. Their guns, their bows and arrows are broken, their lodges cut in pieces, their dogs killed, all their provisions and their hides are taken from them. If they are bold enough to resist the penalty, they are beaten with bows, sticks and clubs, and this torment frequently terminates in the death of the unhappy aggressor. Any one who should set fire to the prairie by accident or imprudence, or in any way frighten off the herd, would be sure to be well beaten.
As soon as the law is promulgated, the construction of the pen is commenced. Everybody labors at it with cheerful ardor, for it is an affair of common interest, on which the subsistence of the entire tribe during several months will depend. The pen has an area of about an acre. To inclose it in a circular form, stakes are firmly fixed in the ground, and the distance between them filled with logs, dry boughs, masses of stone - in short, with whatever they can find that will answer the purpose. The circular palisade has but one opening; before this opening is a slope embracing fifteen or twenty feet between the hills: this inclined plane grows wider as it diverges from the circle; at its two sides they continue the fence to a long distance on the plain.
As soon as these preparations' are completed, the Indians elect a grandmaster of ceremonies and of the pen. He is generally an old man, a distinguished personage, belonging to the Wah-kon, or medicine band, and famous in the art of jugglery, which the Indians, as I have remarked, deem a