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Updated: June 17, 2025
I remember on this occasion of our last sugar bush in Minnesota, that I stood one day outside of our hut and watched the approach of a visitor a bent old man, his hair almost white, and carrying on his back a large bundle of red willow, or kinnikinick, which the Indians use for smoking. He threw down his load at the door and thus saluted us: "You have indeed perfect weather for sugar-making."
Here, too, the lonely trapper, when crossing the range in quest of beaver, often chose this lofty spot on which to kindle his little fire and broil juicy steaks of the black-tail deer, the finest venison in the world; but before he indulged in the savoury morsels, if he was in the least superstitious or devout, or inspired by the sublime scene around him, he lighted his pipe, and after saluting the elevated ridge on which he sat by the first whiff of the fragrant kinnikinick, Indian-fashion, he in turn offered homage in the same manner to the sky above him, the earth beneath, and to the cardinal points of the compass, and was then prepared to eat his solitary meal in a spirit of thankfulness.
At their appearance, the warriors rose gravely, shook hands, and motioned the white men to take seats upon a robe placed at Lame Foot's left hand. The air in the place was already beginning to thicken with kinnikinick and fire smoke; the mingled smell of tobacco and skins made it nauseating. Colonel Cummings would gladly have hurried his errand. But Indian etiquette forbade haste.
The warriors stayed outside, preserving their calm with kinnikinick. In the dark, the open bowls of their scattered pipes were so many ruddy glow-worms. From the pitchy shelter of the shingle roof, Squaw Charley looked out. He sat on his heels, about him the few mangy dogs that had not found the dinner-pot. One of these stirred.
A friend to-day, an enemy to-morrow, as the saying is; and you may jist as well say it backwards; for, as things turn up, I'm no sich blasted enemy, jist now, no-way no-how. I'm for holding a peace talk, as the Injuns say, d n 'em, burying the axe, and taking a whiff or two at the kinnikinick of friendship. So cuss away, if it will do you good; and I'll stand it.
Bunches of coreopsis and vermilion-tipped painter's-brush adorned the chimney-piece; tall spikes of yucca rose from an Indian jar in one corner of the room, and a splendid sheaf of yellow columbines from another; fresh kinnikinick was looped and wreathed about the pictures; and on the dining-table stood, most beautiful and fragile of all, a bowlful of Mariposa lilies, their delicate, lilac-streaked bells poised on stems so slender that the fairy shapes seemed to float in air, supported at their own sweet will.
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