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Beyond a doubt it was cold; I don't mean cold in the ordinary manner, cold such as you can localize to your feet, or your fingers, or your nose, but cold all over, crushing cold. Putting on coat and moccassins as close to the fire as possible, I ran to the tree on which I had hung the thermometer on the previous evening; it stood at 37 below zero at 3:30 in the morning.
They cannot keep long together in numerous parties from the want of foresight to provide for their subsistence; and accordingly a little more than a week's absence brought Pigewis back again, with his party, without their having seen an enemy, and in the destitute condition of being without food and moccassins.
I was well found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official kit.
A pair of loose trousers of coloured serge or flannel, a sash of scarlet worsted or wampum girt about the loins over a shirt of indescribable hue, moccassins on the feet, and a red cap or bonnet of fox-skin, or not unfrequently a shock of hair that despises any covering, and alike defies the force of sun and storm, forms the common costume of these sons of toil, whose lives, commonly of short duration, are wasted in quick alternations of perilous labour and wild debauch.
Penellan, who had already engaged in whale-fishing in the arctic waters, took care that woollen and fur coverings, many sealskin moccassins, and wood for the making of sledges with which to cross the ice-fields were put on board. The amount of provisions was increased, and spirits and charcoal were added; for it might be that they would have to winter at some point on the Greenland coast.
The leggins of some of them were fringed with human hair, taken from the scalps of their enemies; and their moccassins, or shoes, were neatly ornamented with porcupine quills. They are notorious horse-stealers, and often make predatory excursions to the Mandan villages on the banks of the Missouri, to steal them.
I wonder which of his wives for I was told he had several braided all these small rings of hair, and confined them with the blue love-knots; but it is more than probable that the grave Indian performed his own toilet. His blue surtout beaver hat accorded ill with his Indian leggings and moccassins. I must think that the big man's dress was in shocking bad taste, and decided failure.
Then we made a smooth place in the soft sand on which to spread the blankets, the first good place we had found to sleep since leaving Death Valley. The next job was to make moccassins for ourselves and for the oxen, for it was plain they could not go on another day barefooted.
The old fort is very little altered from what it used to be, surrounded by its wooden pailings, and having a store on the left side of the entrance gate, where all the Indians come to make their purchases in cotton-goods and groceries in exchange for their blankets, moccassins, or furs. The Assiniboine we crossed just before getting to the fort, on a ferry.
Upon arrival in camp these boots should always be removed from the dogs feet, and hung up in the smoke of the fire, with moccassins of the men, to dry. It was on an occasion when this custom had been forgotten that Muskeymote performed the feat we have already mentioned, of eating his boots.
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