Wherever, from that day, Umatilla or Young Eagle's Plume was seen, each wore the black feather from the great eagle's nest, amid the mists and rainbows or mist-bows of the Falls of the Missouri.
It was a touch of poetic sentiment, but these Indian races of the Columbia lived in a region that was itself a school of poetry.

The Potlatch was sentiment, and the Sun-dance was an actual poem.

Many of the tents of skin abounded with picture-writing, and the stories told by the night fires were full of picturesque figures.
Gretchen's poetic eye found subjects for verse in all these things, and she often wrote down her impressions, and read them to practical Mrs.
Woods, who affected to ignore such things, but yet seemed secretly delighted with them.
"You have _talons_" she used to say, "but they don't amount to anything, anyway.

Nevertheless--" The expedition to the Falls of the Missouri, and the new and strange sights which Benjamin saw there, led him to desire to make other trips with the schoolmaster, to whom he became daily more and more attached.

In fact, the Indian boy came to follow his teacher about with a kind of jealous watchfulness.