but there is still a large part of North America where there are more
Indians than white men. This is far to the north in Canada, in a wide
strip between the towns and farms of the white men and the cold, snow
land of the Eskimos. The soldiers who have been to the Great War tell
us much about England, France, and Germany; but the country where the
Indians still have their hunting grounds is larger than all of these
countries put together. The region is covered with evergreen forests,
a great silent land of deep snow and trees and cold. It is too cold
and rocky for the white man to make farms, so he has not cut down the
trees. There are no cities nor houses, nothing but forests where the
Indian hunts game and lives in his tent as he has always lived.
To trade with these Indians, the white men have built stores in the
edge of the Indian country. They are called Posts--Trading Posts. When
the warm days of June come and the ice is all melted, the keeper of a
Post begins to look up the river watching for canoes to come around
the bend. At last he sees one. In front sits an Indian woman paddling,
and in the stern of the canoe sits Otelne, her husband, paddling and
also steering. They are coming to the post to trade. In the middle of
the boat are a boy, a girl, a brand new baby, and a dog. The boy's
name is Akusk (arrow); the girl's name is Wabogum (flower). The baby's
name is Wabshish (little white hare). He is tied to a board to keep
him safe and warm. The canoe contains one more thing, very precious, a
big bundle of fur skins. This is the wages of a whole year, the result
of a hard winter's work in the forest.
The keeper of the Post shakes hands with Otelne. Otelne opens the bale
of furs, and the first afternoon he and his wife trade a few muskrat
skins for some flour, beans, bacon and canned peaches. Then the Indians
camp and have a feast. Other canoes come down the river bringing other
families until the post becomes a great picnic ground. They talk over
the happenings of the winter, of getting lost in storms, of upsetting
their canoes, of falling through the ice, of the bears they have caught,
and the wolves that have chased them. They wonder what has happened to
the Indians who do not come back. They have canoe races and the
different families, or tribes, play match games of la crosse. This game,
which the white men learned from the Indians, is now the national game
of Canada, as baseball is of the United States.
In August the trading is over, and the Indians start back to the hunting
grounds for another year's work. The canoe is loaded full. Instead of
the bale of furs, Otelne has in his canoe a new tent, a sheet-iron
stove, some stove pipe, twenty-five steel traps, a rifle, one thousand
cartridges, fish hooks and fishing line, a wood saw, knives, axes,
buckets, blankets, and a lot of white men's clothes. He did not buy any
shoes because he would rather have the moccasins he makes himself.
It is hard work to paddle the heavy load up the river against the
swift current. Presently they hear the roaring noise of a waterfall
where the stream jumps down over some rocks. The canoe cannot pass
this, so they all get out and carry the canoe and all its load, bit by
bit, along a little path that leads to the quiet water above the
falls. Here they load the canoe again and paddle on, but they soon
come to another carrying place, or portage as it is called, and have
to unload again. They are not afraid to leave their belongings while
they go back to the foot of the falls, for no Indian would think of
stealing anything he found in this way.
You can see why the Indians do not use white men's boats, for no white
man's boat is as light as the birch bark canoe. You can also see why
they do not take much food from the post. They cannot carry it and all
they need for camping and hunting too. They must have the tent and
traps, so they take only food enough to last until they get far enough
from the post to find game.
After a few days' journey they leave the main stream and go up one of
its branches. Here they come to a place where the stream widens into a
lake. The water is very still, and as the fishing is good, the Indians
camp here for a week and rest. There are so many wolves and wild cats
in the woods that Otelne puts up the tent on a little island out in
the middle of the lake.
For many days they go on upstream. Over and over again they have to
carry their goods around rapids. The dark branches of spruce, hemlock,
and fir trees often hang over the stream.
Trout, pickerel, and other fish dart in behind the rocks around which
the currents flow. Sometimes a muskrat, a beaver, or an otter swims
quickly into his hole in the bank. But sometimes the rifle is too
quick for him and the Indians have fresh meat for supper. Each day
they pass the mouths of little streams and the main stream gets
smaller and smaller, till at last it is hardly more than a brook.
They are busy nearly all the time carrying their supplies around rapids.
At last they can go no farther in the canoe because the stream has grown
too small and rocky. To go still farther in their direction, the Indians
must find a stream which flows the opposite way. To find this stream
they must cross a hill, because, you see, the water will run down the
hill on the other side, gathering more and more water, and getting
larger as it goes. This water parting is called a divide, or watershed.
There is such a divide at the top of every mountain range. For instance,
all the rivers flowing east of the Alleghany Mountains run east to the
Atlantic Ocean; all those flowing west run finally into the Mississippi
River. So the Alleghany Mountains are a divide.
Otelne knows of one place where the streams bend in such a way that he
can, in an hour, carry his canoe from canoe-water on one stream to
canoe-water on the stream over the hill. The Indians know where these
good portages are just as country boys know where they can catch
rabbits, or as city boys know where they can find a place to play. For
many days, Otelne steers his canoe down stream, camping on the bank
each night.
In late October the first snow falls. They camp beside the lonely
river, and the fur hunting begins in earnest. Otelne fixes a round of
traps. He starts away from his tent and makes a large circle in the
forest, fixing a round of traps as he goes. When he cannot see the
sun, he keeps his direction through the forest by noticing the moss
which grows only on the shady side of a tree trunk. He can keep his
direction at night, too, if he can see the stars, for long before
white men came, Indians had noticed that one star always seemed to be
in the same place. They call it the "Great Star". We call it the
"North Star". The pointers in the Great Dipper show us where it is.
Otelne watches them every clear night.
Twenty miles he travels, setting his traps wherever he sees in the
snow the tracks of the animals he wants. He drags sweet-smelling meat
along the snow, hoping that animals crossing this trail will follow
it to the traps. After a day or two, he goes around again, putting
fresh bait on his traps and taking out the animals he has caught.
After several rounds, he finds that game is getting scarce here, so he
and his wife put the tent and all their things on two toboggans
(sleds), tuck the baby down in the blankets, and trudge all day
through the forest. When night comes they put up the tent on the snow,
cut evergreen boughs to make a thick carpet, and build a fire in the
sheet-iron stove. All winter long they move every two or three weeks,
finding a new camp whenever a new hunting-ground is necessary.
[Illustration: OTELNE WALKS ON SNOW SHOES.]
Can you see Otelne as he visits his traps? He walks on snow shoes to
keep from sinking into the snow which is now three feet deep. His big
dog pulls a toboggan on which is an axe, a package of raw smoked meat
in a little box of birch bark, and a roll of blankets. Akusk, the
twelve-year-old boy, goes with his father, from whom he learns all the
Indian arts and the ways of the animals in the forest. It is all the
schooling he ever gets. How would you like to get your schooling that
way?
The first trap is empty and the bait gone, so Otelne puts fresh bait in
it. The second trap holds a fine mink, dead and frozen stiff. His skin
is worth ten dollars. The fifth trap has in it the foot of a muskrat and
some scraps of fur lying around. Some hungry animal has raided the trap,
and the big dog, Wagush, smells the trail, whines, and jumps about so
that he upsets the sled. Otelne turns him loose, and away he goes
yelping through the forest, until at last his regular baying tells
Otelne that he has treed the animal. It is a lynx. The rifle brings him
down and he is placed on the sled along with the mink.
At nightfall, ten miles from the tent, they come to a shelter made of
boughs. When Otelne set the traps, he built this shelter to keep off
the cold wind, for he knew he would have to sleep here on bitter cold
nights. He builds a roaring fire in front of the shelter. They eat the
mink, give the scraps and bones to Wagush, wrap up in rabbit-skin
blankets, and lie down with their heads toward the shelter, their feet
toward the fire, and the dog beside them. Two hours later Wagush wakes
them with a growl. Two wolves are prowling around in the spruce trees,
but wolves fear fire, so Otelne throws on more wood and they slink away.
At dawn the Indians are up and on their way to the rest of the traps.
They kill a bear. This is great luck, for now they have meat enough to
last for weeks. Even with the help of Akusk and Wagush, Otelne has
hard work to drag that bear on the toboggan six miles back to the
tent. All three are so weary they have to rest all the next day.
Sulian, the mother, who skins the animals, takes care of the skins and
smokes the meat. That is her part of the work. You may be sure that
the children are glad to see their father and brother come back, for
there isn't another family within twenty miles, nor is there one white
man within a hundred miles.
Day after day, through the long, cold winter, Otelne and his family
hunt the fur that they can trade for the white man's tools and
supplies. When the trapping season ends, Otelne is four hundred miles
from the post, and it takes many weeks of canoeing to get back there
for summer trading. They carry with them a bundle of smoked meat to
eat where game or fish cannot be found.
Each year Indian families go out for furs and never come back. The
canoe may upset and swift water carry away all their things. Sometimes
they get lost and freeze to death in terrible blizzards. The hunting
may be bad, so they starve. The father may be drowned or break his
leg and freeze to death away out in the forest. Then the mother cannot
get enough game to keep the children alive, so they all starve and the
wolves eat them. The fur gatherer has a hard, cold life in the far
North, but it is better than it used to be before he traded with the
white man and got guns, knives, traps, and fish hooks.
When all goes well with the fur gatherer, the boys and girls in the
little tent play many games. They are fond of checkers. To make a
checker-board, they split a piece of wood out of a log, smooth one side
of it with an axe, mark it into squares with a knife, and blacken some
of them with charcoal. For men, they saw off short pieces of a stick as
thick as your thumb. Jackstraws is another favorite game, but the straws
are tiny canoe paddles, knives, guns, snowshoes, snow shovels, and
canoes, all whittled out of wood, making a queer looking pile. They have
one campfire game in which they shake up eight disks of bone in a bowl.
This game is so hard to learn that my friend, Professor Speck, spent
three days learning it, and the rules for counting the score would fill
three pages of a book like this one. This game, so hard to learn, shows
that the Indian would be as smart as the white man if he had a chance to
learn the same things. White men who hunt with the Indians like them and
say they are good companions.
The white men from the trading posts bring the furs down to our great
cities, where they are made into mittens and muffs and coats and
ladies' furs, and the next winter, while the Indian is back in the
forest following his traps, we can see people wearing the furs in
almost any part of the United States.
--_J. Russell Smith.
Courtesy of The John C. Winston Co._
OUTLINE
1. Early life of the Indians.
2. Their present home in the North.
3. A visit to the trading post.
(_a_) Who came
(_b_)
(_c_)
4. The Indians' return.
(_a_)
(_b_)
5. The life of a trapper.
(_a_)
(_b_)
(_c_)
(_d_)
6. Games.
QUESTIONS
1. The setting of a story tells the place of the story, when it
occurs, and who are the actors. Your teacher will ask one of you to
give the setting of "Otelne, the Indian of the Great North Woods".
2. If you were an Indian boy or girl, how do you think you would
feel during the winter about the summer trip to the trading post?
3. How does the trading post help the Indians? Make a list of things
they buy. What can you think of that the author of the story did not
mention? What else besides the cost will the Indians have to think
of when deciding whether or not to buy anything?
4. Tell about the trip back into the woods after visiting the post.
Why do they go so far?
5. Tell the story of a visit to the trap with Otelne as if you were
Akusk. Don't be afraid to put in probable incidents not told by the
author.
WHICH IS RIGHT?
Arrange your papers with your name and grade on the first line;
place the date and your room or teacher's name on the second line;
leave the third line blank, and, beginning with the fourth line,
number the lines from one to seven. This exercise is to help you
to read quickly and accurately. See that you understand all the
directions in each problem before you try to carry them out. On
the other hand, work as quickly as you can.
1. How am I to sing your praise
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks
Reading picture story-books.
(_Stevenson--"Picture Books in Winter."_)
If this is a picture of play, draw a horseshoe on the first line.
If it is a picture of quiet, draw a hitching-post.
2. The long war with the Danes had left England without law and
order. Trade and commerce had almost ceased to exist. The
monasteries and churches were in ruins and the schools nearly all
destroyed.
Which of the words below best states the cause of this
destruction?
Famine
Trade
War
Disease
Write your answer on the _second_ line.
3. The axle in breaking had thrown the full weight of the heavy
cart upon the body of the unconscious boy. Although there were
many willing hands ready to help, none could lift the weight. Jean
saw the crowd and hurried to the spot. Bracing himself, he placed
his massive shoulders against the side of the cart. Slowly but
surely it lifted and the child was drawn safely from beneath.
Which of the following words best describes Jean?
kind thoughtful strong brave good
Write your answer on the third line.
4. If you think after reading this paragraph that it is easy to
land a trout, write the word _hard_ on the fourth line. If you
think it is hard, write the word _easy_ there.
Trout fishing in mountain streams is said to be the greatest sport
in the world. When a trout has been caught on the hook, it is
usually a question of which will tire first, the fish or the
fisherman. Often the fish will get the best of it and the
fisherman be forced to go home with a broken rod and no fish for
his pains.
5. If in the following words _c_ is found with _h_ more often than
with _r_, write _church_ on the fifth line. But if _c_ is found
more often with _r_, write _crown_ there.
checkers
cruller
bench
candy
crunch
6. On the sixth line write any words in this sentence which have
the same number of letters as the fourth word of the sentence, but
which have no letters in common.
7. If a soldier wears out a pair of shoes every month, how many
pairs of shoes will be needed for a regiment of 3000 men for a
year of service?
Write the answer on the seventh line.
"VERDUN BELLE"
This is the story of Verdun Belle, a trench dog, who adopted a
young leatherneck, followed him to the edge of the battle around
Chateau-Thierry and was waiting for him when they carried him out.
It is a true story.
Belle was a setter, shabby white, with great splotches of chocolate
brown in her coat. Her ears were brown and silken. She was under size
and would not have stood a chance among the haughtier breeds shown in
splendor at dog shows in Madison Square Garden. But the marines in the
regiment to which she attached herself thought there never was a dog
like her since the world began.
No one in the regiment knew whence she came or why. When she joined
the outfit in a _sector_ near Verdun, she singled out one of the
privates as her very own and attached herself to him for the duration
of the war. The young marine would talk long and earnestly to her, and
every one declared that Belle could "_comprè_" English.
She used to curl up at his feet when he slept or follow silently to
keep him company at the _listening post_. She would sit hopefully in
front of him whenever he settled down with his laden _mess kit_, which
the cooks always heaped extra high in honor of Belle.
Belle was as used to war as the most weather-beaten French _poilu_. The
tremble of the ground did not disturb her and the whining whir of the
shells overhead only made her twitch and wrinkle her nose in her sleep.
She was trench-broken. You could have put a plate of savory pork chops
on the _parapet_ and nothing would have induced her to go after them.
She weathered many a gas attack. Her master contrived a protection for
her by cutting down and twisting a French gas mask. At first this sack
over her nose irritated her tremendously; but once, when she was trying
to claw it off with her forepaws, she got a whiff of the poisoned air.
Then a great light dawned on Belle; and after that, at the first alarm,
she would race for her mask. You could not have taken it from her until
her master's pat on her back told her everything was all right.
In the middle of May, Belle presented a proud but not particularly
astonished regiment with nine confused and wriggling puppies,
black-and-white, or, like the mother, brown-and-white, and possessed
of immense appetites. Seven of these were alive and kicking when the
order came for the regiment to pull up stakes and speed across France
to help stem the German tide north of the troubled Marne.
In the rush and hubbub of marching orders Belle and her brood were
forgotten by every one but the young marine. It never once entered his
head to leave her or her pups behind. Somewhere he found a market
basket and tumbled the litter into that. He could carry the pups, he
explained, and the mother dog would trot at his heels.
Now the amount of hardware a marine is expected to carry on the march is
carefully calculated to the maximum strength of the average soldier, yet
this leatherneck found extra muscle somewhere for his precious basket.
If it came to the worst, he thought, he could _jettison_ his pack. It
was not very clear in his mind what he would do with his charges during
a battle, but he trusted to luck and Verdun Belle.
For twenty-five miles he carried his burden along the parched French
highway. No one wanted to jeer him out of it, nor could have if they
would. When there followed a long advance by _camion_, he yielded his
place to the basket of wriggling pups, while he himself hung on the
tail-board.
But there was more hiking, and the basket proved too much. It seemed
that the battle line was somewhere far off. Solemnly the young marine
killed four of the puppies, discarded the basket and slipped the other
three into his shirt. Thus he trudged on his way, carrying those
three, pouched in forest green, as a kangaroo carries its young, while
the mother dog trotted trustingly behind.
One night he found that one of the black-and-white pups was dead. The
road by this time was black with hurrying troops, lumbering _lorries_
jostling the line of advancing ambulances, and dust-gray columns of
soldiers moving on as far ahead and as far behind as the eye could
see. Passing silently in the other direction was the desolate
procession of refugees from the invaded countryside. Now and then a
herd of cows or a little cluster of fugitives from some desolated
village, trundling their most cherished possessions in wheelbarrows
and baby carts, would cause an eddy in the traffic.
Somewhere in this crowding and confusion Belle was lost. In the
morning there was no sign of her, and the young marine did not know
what to do. He begged a cup of milk from an old French woman, and with
the eye dropper from his kit he tried to feed the two pups. It did not
work well. Faintly the wind brought down the valley from far ahead the
sound of cannon. Soon he would be in the thick of it, and there was no
Belle to care for the pups.
Two ambulances of a field hospital were passing in the unending
caravan. A lieutenant who looked human was in the front seat of one of
them, a sergeant beside him. The _leatherneck_ ran up to them, blurted
out his story, gazed at them imploringly and thrust the puppies into
their hands. "Take good care of them," he said; "I don't suppose I'll
ever see them again."
And he was gone. A little later in the day that field hospital was
pitching its tents and setting up its kitchens and tables in a deserted
farm. Amid all the hurry of preparation for the big job ahead they found
time to worry about those pups. The problem was food. _Corned willy_ was
tried and found wanting. Finally the first sergeant hunted up a
farm-bred private, and the two of them spent that evening chasing four
nervous and distrustful cows around a pasture trying vainly to capture
enough milk to provide supper for the new members of the hospital staff.
Next morning the problem was still unsolved. But it was solved that
evening. For that evening a fresh contingent of marines trooped by the
farm and in their wake, tired, anxious, but undiscouraged, was Verdun
Belle. Six miles back two days before she had lost her master, and
until she should find him again she evidently had thought that any
marine was better than none.
The troops did not halt at the farm, but Belle did. At the gate she
stopped dead in her tracks, drew in her lolling tongue, sniffed
inquiringly at the evening air, and, like a flash, a white streak
along the drive, she raced to the distant tree, where, on a pile of
discarded dressings in the shade, the pups were sleeping.
All the corps men stopped work and stood around and marveled. For the
onlooker it was such a family reunion as warms the heart. For the
worried mess sergeant it was a great relief. For the pups it was a
mess call, clear and unmistakable.
So with renewed faith in her heart and only one worry left in her
mind, Verdun Belle and her puppies settled down with this field
hospital. When the next day the reach of the artillery made it
advisable to move down the valley to the shelter of a fine hillside
chateau, you may be sure that room was made in the first ambulance
for the _three_ wanderers.
[Illustration: TWO COTS WERE SHOVED TOGETHER UNDER A SPREADING TREE]
In a grove of trees beside the house the tents were pitched and the cots
of the expected patients ranged side by side. The wounded came--came
hour after hour in steady streams, and the boys of the hospital worked
on them night and day. They could not possibly keep track of all the
cases, but there was one who did. Always a mistress of the art of
keeping out from under foot, very quietly Belle hung around and
investigated each ambulance that turned in from the main road and backed
up with its load of pain to the door of the receiving room.
Then one evening they lifted out a young marine, listless in the half
stupor of shell shock. To the busy workers he was just Case No. Such
and Such, but there was no need to tell any one who saw the wild
rejoicing of the dog that Belle had found her own at last.
The first consciousness her master had of his new surroundings was the
feel of her rough pink tongue licking the dust from his face. And
those who passed that way on the following Sunday found two cots
shoved together in the kindly shade of a spreading tree. On one the
mother dog lay, contented with her puppies. Fast asleep on the other,
his arm thrown out so that one grimy hand could touch one silken ear,
lay the young marine. Before long they would have to ship him on to
the _evacuation hospital_, on from there to the base hospital, on and
on and on. It was not very clear to anyone how another separation
could be prevented. It was a perplexing question, but they knew in
their hearts that they could safely leave the answer to some one else.
They could leave it to Verdun Belle.
--"_Stars and Stripes._"
1. _Comprè_ and _poilu_ are "soldiers' French". From the way they
are used here, what do you think they mean?
2. The following are war terms. See if you can find out, if you do
not already know, what they mean.