This introduction is a genuine one, for all the boys who appear in these sketches have really lived and played a part in the incidents herein recorded. Each little actor, including the writer, made his entrance upon the stage of life. In the tee-pee or in the dome-shaped earth lodge; for, in the years when we boys were born, only the aboriginal dwellings were in use among our people, the Omaha tribe of Indians. Like all the in fants for countless generations in the line of our ancestry, we too had to pass through the cradle-board period while our bones ripened, as the Indians say, and grew strong enough, to bear the weight of our bodies When at last our mothers gave us liberty to creep and to toddle about, we promptly used that free dom to get into all sorts of mischief as we explored the new and wonderful world in. Which we found ourselves.