Those guests who assembled first passed their time in smoking the
medicine pipe until the others should arrive, for so long as a single
invited guest is absent the feast cannot begin. Dignified silence was
maintained while the pipe thus circulated from hand to hand. When the
last guest arrived they began.
The men were seated in two rows, face to face. Feasts of this kind
usually consist of but one species of food, and on the present
occasion it was an enormous caldron full of maize which had to be
devoured. About fifty sat down to eat a quantity of what may be termed
thick porridge that would have been ample allowance for a hundred
ordinary men. Before commencing, San-it-sa-rish desired an aged
medicine man to make an oration, which he did fluently and poetically.
Its subject was the praise of the giver of the feast. At the end of
each period there was a general "hou! hou!" of assent--equivalent to
the "hear! hear!" of civilized men.
Other orators then followed, all of whom spoke with great ease and
fluency, and some in the most impassioned strains, working themselves
and their audience up to the highest pitch of excitement, now shouting
with frenzied violence till their eyes glared from their sockets and
the veins of their foreheads swelled almost to bursting as they spoke
of war and chase, anon breaking into soft modulated and pleasing tones
while they dilated upon the pleasures of peace and hospitality.
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