“Go to the ant.”--_Proverbs._
IT was now the middle of September: the weather, which had continued
serene and beautiful for some time, with dewy nights and misty mornings,
began to show symptoms of the change of season usual at the approach
of the equinox. Sudden squalls of wind, with hasty showers, would come
sweeping over the lake; the nights and mornings were damp and chilly.
Already the tints of autumn were beginning to crimson the foliage of the
oaks, and where the islands were visible, the splendid colours of
the maple shone out in gorgeous contrast with the deep verdure of the
evergreens and light golden-yellow of the poplar; but lovely as they now
looked, they had not yet reached the meridian of their beauty, which
a few frosty nights at the close of the month was destined to bring to
perfection--a glow of splendour to gladden the eye for a brief space,
before the rushing winds and rains of the following month were to sweep
them away, and scatter them abroad upon the earth.
One morning, just after a night of heavy rain and wind, the two boys
went down to see if the lake was calm enough for trying the raft, which
Louis had finished before the coming on of the bad weather. The water
was rough and crested with mimic waves, and they felt not disposed to
launch the raft on so stormy a surface, but they stood looking out over
the lake and admiring the changing foliage, when Hector pointed out to
his cousin a dark speck dancing on the waters, between the two nearest
islands. The wind, which blew very strong still from the north-east,
brought the object nearer every minute. At first they thought it might
be a pine-branch that was floating on the surface, when as it came
bounding over the waves, they perceived that it was a birch-canoe, but
impelled by no visible arm. It was a strange sight upon that lonely lake
to see a vessel of any kind afloat, and, on first deciding that it was
a canoe, the boys were inclined to hide themselves among the bushes, for
fear of the Indians, but curiosity got the better of their fears.
“The owner of yonder little craft is either asleep or absent from her;
for I see no paddle, and it is evidently drifting without any one to
guide it,” said Hector, after intently watching the progress of the
tempest-driven vessel; assured as it approached nearer that such was
the case, they hurried to the beach just as a fresh gust had lodged the
canoe among the branches of a fallen cedar which projected out some way
into the water.
By creeping along the trunk of the tree, and trusting at times to the
projecting boughs, Louis, who was the most active and the lightest of
weight, succeeded in getting within reach of the canoe, and with some
trouble and the help of a stout branch that Hector handed to him, he
contrived to moor her in safety on the shore, taking the precaution of
hauling her well up on the shingle, lest the wind and water should set
her afloat again. “Hec, there is something in this canoe, the sight of
which will gladden your heart,” cried Louis with a joyful look. “Come
quickly, and see my treasures.”
“Treasures! You may well call them treasures,” exclaimed Hector, as he
helped Louis to examine the contents of the canoe, and place them on the
shore, side by side.
The boys could hardly find words to express their joy and surprise at
the discovery of a large jar of parched rice, a tomahawk, an Indian
blanket almost as good as new, a large mat rolled up with a bass bark
rope several yards in length wound round it, and what was more precious
than all, an iron three-legged pot in which was a quantity of Indian
corn. These articles had evidently constituted the stores of some Indian
hunter or trapper; possibly the canoe had been imperfectly secured and
had drifted from its moorings during the gale of the previous night,
unless by some accident the owner had fallen into the lake and been
drowned; this was of course only a matter of conjecture on which it was
useless to speculate, and the boys joyfully took possession of the good
fortune that had so providentially been wafted, as it were, to their
very feet.
“It was a capital chance for us, that old cedar having been blown down
last night just where it was,” said Louis; “for if the canoe had not
been drawn into the eddy, and stopped by the branches, we might have
lost it. I trembled when I saw the wind driving it on so rapidly that it
would founder in the deep water, or go off to Long Island.”
“I think we should have got it at Pine-tree Point,” said Hector, “but
I am glad it was lodged so cleverly among the cedar boughs. I was half
afraid you would have fallen in once or twice, when you were trying to
draw it nearer to the shore.” “Never fear for me, my friend; I can cling
like a wild cat when I climb. But what a grand pot! What delightful
soups, and stews, and boils, Catharine will make! Hurrah!” and Louis
tossed up his new fur cap, that he had made with great skill from an
entire fox skin, in the air, and cut sundry fantastic capers which
Hector gravely condemned as unbecoming his mature age; (Louis was turned
of fifteen;) but with the joyous spirit of a little child he sung, and
danced, and laughed, and shouted, till the lonely echoes of the islands
and far-off hills returned the unusual sound, and even his more steady
cousin caught the infection, and laughed to see Louis so elated.
Leaving Hector to guard the prize, Louis ran gaily off to fetch
Catharine to share his joy, and come and admire the canoe, and the
blanket, and the tripod, and the corn, and the tomahawk. Indiana
accompanied them to the lake shore, and long and carefully she examined
the canoe and its contents, and many were the plaintive exclamations she
uttered as she surveyed the things piece by piece, till she took notice
of the broken handle of an Indian paddle which lay at the bottom of the
vessel; this seemed to afford some solution to her of the mystery, and
by broken words and signs she intimated that the paddle had possibly
broken in the hand of the Indian, and that in endeavouring to regain the
other part, he had lost his balance and been drowned. She showed Hector
a rude figure of a bird engraved with some sharp instrument, and rubbed
in with a blue colour. This, she said, was the totem or crest of the
chief of the tribe, and was meant to represent a _crow_. The canoe had
belonged to a chief of that name. While they were dividing the contents
of the canoe among them to be carried to the shanty, Indiana, taking up
the bass-rope and the blanket, bundled up the most of the things, and
adjusting the broad thick part of the rope to the front of her head, she
bore off the burden with great apparent ease, as a London or Edinburgh
porter would his trunks and packages, turning round with a merry glance
and repeating some Indian words with a lively air as she climbed with
apparent ease the steep bank, and soon distanced her companions, to her
great enjoyment. That night, Indiana cooked some of the parched rice,
Indian fashion, with venison, and they enjoyed the novelty very much--it
made an excellent substitute for bread, of which they had been so long
deprived.
Indiana gave them to understand that the rice harvest would soon be
ready on the lake, and that now they had got a canoe, they would go out
and gather it, and so lay by a store to last them for many months.
This little incident furnished the inhabitants of the shanty with
frequent themes for discussion. Hector declared that the Indian corn was
the most valuable of their acquisitions. “It will insure us a crop, and
bread and seed-corn for many years,” he said; he also highly valued the
tomahawk, as his axe was worn and blunt.
Louis was divided between the iron pot and the canoe. Hector seemed
to think the raft, after all, might have formed a substitute for the
latter; besides, Indiana had signified her intention of helping him to
make a canoe. Catharine declared in favour of the blanket, as it would
make, after thorough ablutions, warm petticoats with tight bodices for
herself and Indiana. With deer-skin leggings, and a fur jacket, they
should be comfortably clad. Indiana thought the canoe the most precious,
and was charmed with the good jar and the store of rice: nor did she
despise the packing rope, which she soon showed was of use in carrying
burdens from place to place, Indian fashion: by placing a pad of soft
fur in front of the head, she could carry heavy loads with great ease.
The mat, she said, was useful for drying the rice she meant to store.
The very next day after this adventure, the two girls set to work, and
with the help of Louis’s large knife, which was called into requisition
as a substitute for scissors, they cut out the blanket dresses, and in
a short time made two comfortable and not very unsightly garments: the
full, short, plaited skirts reached a little below the knee; light vests
bordered with fur completed the upper part, and leggings, terminated
at the ankles by knotted fringes of the doe-skin, with mocassins turned
over with a band of squirrel fur, completed the novel but not very
unbecoming costume; and many a glance of innocent satisfaction did our
young damsels cast upon each other, when they walked forth in the pride
of girlish vanity to display their dresses to Hector and Louis, who, for
their parts, regarded them as most skilful dress-makers, and were never
tired of admiring and commending their ingenuity in the cutting, making
and fitting, considering what rude implements they were obliged to use
in the cutting out and sewing of the garments.
The extensive rice beds on the lake had now begun to assume a
golden tinge which contrasted very delightfully with the deep blue
waters--looking, when lighted up by the sunbeams, like islands of
golden-coloured sand. The ears, heavy laden with the ripe grain, drooped
towards the water. The time of the rice-harvest was at hand, and with
light and joyous hearts our young adventurers launched the canoe, and,
guided in their movements by the little squaw, paddled to the extensive
aquatic fields to gather it in, leaving Catharine and Wolfe to watch
their proceedings from the raft, which Louis had fastened to a
young tree that projected out over the lake, and which made a good
landing-place, likewise a wharf where they could stand and fish very
comfortably. As the canoe could not be overloaded on account of the
rice-gathering, Catharine very readily consented to employ herself with
fishing from the raft till their return.
The manner of procuring the rice was very simple. One person steered the
canoe with the aid of the paddle along the edge of the rice beds, and
another with a stick in one hand, and a curved sharp-edged paddle in
the other, struck the heads off as they bent them over the edge of the
stick; the chief art was in letting the heads fall into the canoe, which
a little practice soon enabled them to do as expertly as the mower lets
the grass fall in ridges beneath his scythe.
Many bushels of wild rice were thus collected. Nothing could he more
delightful than this sort of work to our young people, and merrily they
worked, and laughed, and sung, as they came home each day with their
light bark, laden with a store of grain that they knew would preserve
them from starving through the long, dreary winter that was coming on.
The canoe was a source of great comfort and pleasure to them; they were
now able to paddle out into the deep water, and fish for masquinonjè and
black bass, which they caught in great numbers.
Indiana seemed quite another creature when, armed with a paddle of her
own carving, she knelt at the head of the canoe and sent it flying over
the water; then her dark eyes, often so vacant and glassy, sparkled with
delight, and her teeth gleamed with ivory whiteness as her face broke
into smiles and dimples.
It was delightful then to watch this child of nature, and see how
innocently happy she could be when rejoicing in the excitement of
healthy exercise, and elated by a consciousness of the power she
possessed of excelling her companions in feats of strength and skill
which they had yet to acquire by imitating her.
Even Louis was obliged to confess that the young savage knew more of
the management of a canoe, and the use of the bows and arrows, and the
fishing-line, than either himself or his cousin. Hector was lost in
admiration of her skill in all these things; and Indiana rose highly in
his estimation, the more he saw of her usefulness.
“Every one to his craft,” said Louis, laughing; “the little squaw has
been brought up in the knowledge and practice of such matters from her
babyhood; perhaps if we were to set her to knitting, and spinning, and
milking of cows, and house-work, and learning to read, I doubt if she
would prove half as quick as Catharine or Mathilde.”
“I wonder if she knows anything of God or our Saviour,” said Hector,
thoughtfully.
“Who should have taught her? for the Indians are all heathens;” replied
Louis.
“I have heard my dear mother say, the Missionaries have taken great
pains to teach the Indian children down about Quebec and Montreal, and
that so far from being stupid, they learn very readily,” said Catharine.
“We must try and make Indiana learn to say her prayers; she sits quite
still, and seems to take no notice of what we are doing when we kneel
down, before we go to bed,” observed Hector.
“She cannot understand what we say,” said Catharine; for she knows so
little of our language yet, that of course she cannot comprehend the
prayers, which are in other sort of words than what we use in speaking
of hunting, and fishing, and cooking, and such matters.”
“Well, when she knows more of our way of speaking, then we must teach
her; it is a sad thing for Christian children to live with an untaught
pagan,” said Louis, who, being rather bigoted in his creed, felt a sort
of uneasiness in his own mind at the poor girl’s total want of the rites
of his church; but Hector and Catharine regarded her ignorance with
feelings of compassionate interest, and lost no opportunity that
offered, of trying to enlighten her darkened mind on the subject of
belief in the God who made, and the Lord who saved them. Simply and
earnestly they entered into the task as a labour of love, and though for
a long time Indiana seemed to pay little attention to what they said, by
slow degrees the good seed took root and brought forth fruit worthy of
Him whose Spirit poured the beams of spiritual light into her heart:
but my young readers must not imagine these things were the work of a
day--the process was slow, and so were the results, but they were good
in the end.
And Catharine was glad when, after many go months of patient teaching,
the Indian girl asked permission to kneel down with her white friend,
and pray to the Great Spirit and His Son in the same words that Christ
Jesus gave to his disciples; and if the full meaning of that holy
prayer, so full of humility and love, and moral justice, was not fully
understood by her whose lips repeated it, yet even the act of worship
and the desire to do that which she had been told was right, was,
doubtless, a sacrifice better than the pagan rites which that young
girl had witnessed among her father’s people, who, blindly following the
natural impulse of man in his depraved nature, regarded deeds of blood
and cruelty as among the highest of human virtues, and gloried in those
deeds of vengeance at which the Christian mind revolts with horror.
Indiana took upon herself the management of the rice, drying, husking
and storing it, the two lads working under her direction. She caused
several forked stakes to be cut and sharpened and driven into the
ground; on these were laid four poles, so as to form a frame, over which
she then stretched the bass-mat, which she secured by means of forked
pegs to the frame on the mat; she then spread out the rice thinly, and
lighted a fire beneath, taking good care not to let the flame set fire
to the mat, the object being rather to keep up a strong, slow heat, by
means of the red embers. She next directed the boys to supply her
with pine or cedar boughs, which she stuck in close together, so as
to enclose the fire within the area of the stakes. This was done to
concentrate the heat and cause it to bear upwards with more power; the
rice being frequently stirred with a sort of long-handled, flat shovel.
After the rice was sufficiently dried, the next thing to be done was
separating it from the husk, and this was effected by putting it by
small quantities into the iron pot, and with a sort of wooden pestle
or beetle, rubbing it round and round against the sides. _[FN:
The Indians often make use of a very rude, primitive sort of mortar,
by hollowing out a bass-wood stump, and rubbing the rice with a wooden
pounder.]_ If they had not had the iron pot, a wooden trough must have
been substituted in its stead.
When the rice was husked, the loose chaff was winnowed from it in a flat
basket like a sieve, and it was then put by in coarse birch baskets,
roughly sewed with leather-wood bark, or bags made of matting, woven by
the little squaw from the cedar-bark. A portion was also parched, which
was simply done by putting the rice dry into the iron pot, and setting
it on hot embers, stirring the grain till it burst: it was then stored
by for use. Rice thus prepared is eaten dry, as a substitute for bread,
by the Indians. The lake was now swarming with wild fowl of various
kinds; crowds of ducks were winging their way across it from morning
till night, floating in vast flocks upon its surface, or rising in noisy
groups if an eagle or fish-hawk appeared sailing with slow, majestic
circles above them, then settling down with noisy splash upon the calm
water. The shores, too, were covered with these birds, feeding on the
fallen acorns which fell ripe and brown with every passing breeze; the
berries of the dogwood also furnished them with food; but the wild rice
seemed the great attraction, and small shell-fish and the larvæ of
many insects that had been dropped into the waters, there to come to
perfection in due season, or to form a provision for myriads of wild
fowl that had come from the far north-west to feed upon them, guided by
that instinct which has so beautifully been termed by one of our modern
poetesses, “God’s gift to the weak” _[FN: Mrs. Southey.]_