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THE POTTAWATOMI
287
this book is in the form of a novel, or story, it is primarily expository. In its dealings with Siouan sociology and, I may boldly add, psychology, it is endorsed by all educated Sioux, and by all its readers who have known the Sioux tongue and tribal life. It is in fact an intimate study of the Indians at first hand, and in it I have given conscientiously my best studies of the Dakota people. In the character of Tokala may be seen the chaste Sioux maiden - not at her best, because I haven't the ability to present her at her best; nor do I know of any one who is able to set forth fully the subtle nuances of Indian character. But I have in that book dealt as amply as I could with the moral character of the Dakota. Their standards of morality are very high, and their children are trained in accordance with these. When I lived among them there were only a very few disorderly or bad characters in the entire tribe; and these were regarded in precisely the same light as such persons are in any moral and well-regulated community of white people. - Franklin Welles Calkins, Maine, Minn.
The Pottawatomi
A
Out on the bare prairies of Kansas I lived with the Pottawatomi Indians for four years, and became as one of their tribe; and what I here relate is based mostly on my own observations, or on traditions preserved in the tribe and told to me by the Indians. When the Pot-tawatomis first came into contact with the whites they occupied lands in southern Michigan and Wisconsin; about the time of the Revolutionary War they gradually left Michigan entirely and settled on their Wisconsin lands. About 1850 most of them went across the Mississippi, following the trail of the buffalo, and dispersed over the great western plains; a smaller number remained in the Wisconsin woods. Later, the government gave those of the plains a reservation on the Kansas River; but part of these lands were sold, and now the remnant of the tribe, about 1,200 in number, are living on their reservation in the northeastern corner, of Kansas — besides a band who settled on the Pottawatomie reservation in Oklahoma, and those who now live on reservations in the northern part of Wisconsin. At times the latter Indians receive visits from their tribesmen in the south, who like to revisit their old Wisconsin home, which some of them still remember. /
Their language is very like that of the Ojibwa, the Ottawas, and the Kickapoos; and its soft and harmonious, but brief and clear-cut, sounds tell us that we are dealing with a race of fine feeling, and manly but peaceable character.    In many respects it is a beautiful language;