Long Charlie is the tallest Indian on the Reservation (6 1/2 feet). Here you seem him heating the stones in front of his sweat house where he is about to take a treatment to relieve the suffering resulting from a fight of the day before the "sitting." The red mark on his arm is a wound received from another Indian's knife. These sweat houses are found all along the rivers and creeks. They are made by forcing both ends of long switches into the ground, thus forming a sort of miniature blind tunnel. When the patient is ready for his sweat bath he covers these over with his blankets (sometimes with sods) and builds a fire in front, where he warms his stones. When these are well heated he rolls them into the sweat house with sticks, and taking a vessel of water, he goes in, closing the flap behind him. He pours the water on the hot rocks and remains inside until he is sweating freely. He, then, rushes out and into the cold river, on the bank of which his house is built, coming immediately out of the water and rushing back in until he is thoroughly cooled. This mode of treatment is a sort of panacea for the Indians (especially the older ones and resulted in great mortality in smallpox and measles epidemics, as well as in the more recent "flu" epidemic.
The proud mother of these babies brought them 70 miles by canoe when she heard that she would be able to have their pictures taken. She was a bit unusual in that the Indians are still rather superstitious about having their pictures taken - but so are twins unusual among the Indians. You will note the garb is scarcely that of Indian taste, but this was one of the cases where the Major supplied the apparel in which they posed. The story you often hear that a tribal law require that twins be put to death, is without foundation and the Major is misquoted as its source.
The Indians of the Umatilla Reservation are more adept in the construction of bags than baskets, though they do make some baskets. When they do make them they use corn husks woven together with a twine made from roots they gather. Some baskets are, however, made of cedar roots covered with the inside of some kinds of bark. One of these we purchased, and wishing to use it for candy on one occasion, we scrubbed it thoroughly with a metal "mitt" and soap suds, but neither the form nor the colors were in the least affected.
There are now few medicine men left on the Reservation and when the need of one is urgent he is brought from Yakima. They charge the Indians unmercifully for their services, but their position is a bit precarious, too, for should the patient fail to recover it is not strange for some relative to decide the medicine man killed him or her and seek his life in return.
Baby's first cradle is simple, but as he grows older he is given a larger and more elaborate board. These first ones are almost always made of buckskin, though the later ones are frequently of cloth and very heavily beaded.