No word picture in the classics has so vividly described this common incident in nature.

Indians educated at Carlisle return to their tribes and the education gives them no better expression. Neither are they improved in arts, their work on the canvass with the single exception of landscape work is as crude as that of native ochre painted on the mountain sides. Their minds for the most part are as immature as children, and the love of the recondite runs through all their lives.

It is said that civilization touches barbarism, and barbarism recoils like a burnt child from

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

the fire. So back from the schools to the blanket and the tepee, spoiled as Indians, but not capable of competing and combatting with the whites in the busy marts of the world.

I saw some Pine Ridge boys going through Washington, some time ago, and in their rounds they were conducted through the somber grandeur of the National Capitol building, and the wonderful glory of the National Library. On each occasion the Babylonian splendors struck them and they cried out: "Washtay, lela-wash-tay, lela-wash-tay te-pee," (fine, very fine, very fine houses) which was the limit of their expression; but, back in their wigwams, if unspoiled by education, they can tell the folklore stories of their people, as wonderful as Arabian Nights, yet in words and symbols of simple comprehension.

The younger years of the mountains and plains people were not devoid of their amusements, and primitive joys. Young squaws festooned their hair with wild flowers, and bucks adorned themselves with gay feathers.