Her torn mocassins were a mocking protection to her nearly frozen feet; her worn "okendo kenda" hardly covering a wrinkled neck and arms seamed with the scars of many a self-inflicted wound; she tried to make her tattered blanket meet across her chest, but the benumbed fingers were powerless, and her step so feeble, from fatigue and want of food, that she almost fell before the cheerful fire that seemed to welcome her.

The smile with which she tried to return my greeting added hideously to the savage expression of her features, and her matted hair was covered with flakes of the drifting snow that almost blinded her.
Food, a pipe, and a short nap before the fire, refreshed her wonderfully.

At first she would hardly deign an answer to our questions; now she becomes quite talkative.

Her small keen eye follows the children as they play about the room; she tells of her children when they were young, and played around her; when their father brought her venison for food.
Where are they?
The Chippeways (mark her as she compresses her lips, and see the nervous trembling of her limbs) killed her husband and her oldest son: consumption walked among her household idols.

She has one son left, but he loves the white man's _fire-water_; he has forgotten his aged mother--she has no one to bring her food--the young men laugh at her, and tell her to kill game for herself.
At evening she must be going--ten miles she has to walk to reach her teepee, for she cannot sleep in the white man's house.