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Updated: May 31, 2025
"One evening, she had just lowered a kettle of fat to cool, and as she looked into the hot fat she saw the face of an Ojibway scout looking down at them through the smoke-hole. She said nothing, nor did she betray herself in any way. "After a little she said to her husband in a natural voice: 'Marpeetopah, some one is looking at us through the smoke-hole, and I think it is an enemy's scout.
No one stirred except from time to time one of the dogs, who got up snarling and sniffing the cold air, turned himself round several times as if on a pivot, and finally lay down for another nap. In the morning the travelers one by one raised their heads and looked through the smoke-hole, then fell back again with a grunt. All the world appeared without form and void.
Then he walked round the hut casting an eye upon its roof, and muttered to me as he returned. "Once I was caught thus. There lived a certain wife of mine who set her ear to the smoke-hole and so brought about the death of many, and among them of herself and of our children. Enter. All is safe. Yet if you talk, speak low."
Rachel woke from her stupor to find herself lying on a bed in a great Kaffir hut that was furnished like a European room, for in it were chairs and a table, also rough window places closed with reed mats that took the place of glass. Through the smoke-hole at the top of the hut struck a straight ray of sunlight, by which she judged that it must be about midday.
This is covered with a piece of walrus entrail so thin and transparent that light easily passes through it, and it serves as a window, the only one they have. A smoke-hole is cut through the roof, but there is no door, for the hut is entered through another room built in the same way, fifteen or twenty feet distant, and connected by an underground passage about two feet square with the main room.
In regions where there is much rain it is well to cut the projecting poles very short and put over them a "storm cap," "bull boat" or "shield" made of canvas on a rod bent in a three-foot circle. This device was used by the Mandans over the smoke-hole of their lodges during the heavy rains. That night the boys were showing their handiwork to the hired hands.
The skin, head, and flesh of the slain bear are brought into the house not through the door but through the smoke-hole; a quiver full of arrows is laid under the head and beside it are deposited tobacco, sugar, and other food. The soul of the bear is supposed to carry off the souls of these things with it on the far journey.
From the low night sky, with its myriad fire points, a large bright star peeped in at the smoke-hole of the wigwam between its fluttering lapels, down upon two Dakotas talking in the dark. The mellow stream from the star above, a maid of twenty summers, on a bed of sweetgrass, drank in with her wakeful eyes.
It was too weak to stir or do more than occasionally to make that muffled noise that I'd heard coming up through the smoke-hole." "What you goin' to do with him?" "Well, I hardly know. The Sisters will look after him for a while, if I get him there alive." "Why shouldn't you?" Kaviak supplied the answer straightway by choking and falling into an appalling fit of coughing.
Seeing the serious turn matters were likely to take he resolved not to await the trial, but flew up the smoke-hole and cried out from the top that but for the guests events would have gone very differently. Two pixies of Dartmoor, in the shape of large bundles of rags, led away one of two children who were following their mother homeward.
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