says," Ronald remarked, as his eyes took in the details. "It looks
almost as if it had been dug by the hand of man."
"And so it was," Nangotook replied, "by the hand of man or manito, I
know not which. This is one of the pits where, many winters ago, my
people took out the red metal that the white man calls copper."
"Do you mean this is a savage mine?" cried Jean excitedly. "Surely no
one has worked it for years. See how the trees and bushes have covered
it."
"That is true, little brother. I can show you many such holes on the
hills around this inlet of the waters, and I know of but one where
copper has been taken out either in my time or in my father's. They are
very old, these holes, and no one knows surely who first made them.
There is a tale that they were dug by the manitos of the island. One of
my people, many winters ago, did a service to the manitos, and in return
they showed him how to break up the rock and take out the red metal.
Then they gave to him and to those who should come after him the right
to carry it away. The good fathers say that such tales are not true, but
I know not. This I know, only a certain brotherhood of my people has the
privilege of breaking off the copper, though any one may gather the
pieces that lie about the shores. Of that brotherhood I am a member."
It occurred to Jean to wonder what the manitos, if there were such
beings, would think of Nangotook's bringing to the copper mines two
white men, who according to the Indian opinion had no right whatever to
touch the metal. But he did not put his thought into words. If the idea
had not occurred to Nangotook, the lad certainly did not wish to put it
into his head. Instead he asked: "But how do your people work these
mines without tools?"
The Ojibwa picked up from the edge of the pit a smooth, rounded boulder
and handed it to Jean. It was hard and heavy, weighing about ten pounds.
"This is one of the tools," he remarked briefly.
"You make game of us," Jean retorted. "How can you mine copper by means
of a stone like this?"
"That I will show you to-morrow."
"To-morrow?" cried Ronald. "Why wait so long, when we need copper for
our arrowheads? Isn't there some place about here where we can dig out
or pick up enough at once, so we can be on our way to-morrow?"
The Indian shook his head. "Pieces on the shore all little and no good,"
he said. "I will show you more holes like this. Then we go back to camp.
I will make ready, and to-morrow we come again for copper."
The boys knew from his tone that he had made up his mind, and that
argument would be of no use whatever, so they followed him silently
around the edge of the pit. He led them up the ridge and across the
summit, calling their attention to other holes, varying in size and
depth. Many were mere shallow depressions almost filled with soil, and
all were more or less overgrown with trees and bushes. The boys would
not have recognized most of these places as ancient mines, if Nangotook
had not pointed them out. In some of them grew spruces of a height and
girth to prove that the pits had not been mined for at least a hundred,
perhaps several hundred, years. Round boulders, more or less embedded in
earth and leaf mold, showed here and there among the underbrush, and the
boys dug up several to examine them. They found them all of the same
hard, dark stone. Many were broken and chipped, and the lads concluded
that they must have been used as hammers to break up the rock.
The pits seemed to run in rows across the ridge top, following veins of
metal, and the boys marveled at the patient labor that had been spent on
them. With the primitive tools the savages had used, many, many years
must have been consumed in excavating the holes, especially if, as
Nangotook had said, mining operations had been confined to some one
brotherhood or society of medicine men. It seemed unlikely that even the
chosen clan had ever spent all of its time in mining. Probably its
members only visited the island occasionally and stayed for a few days
or weeks, taking out a little of the metal and carrying it away in their
canoes. Utensils and ornaments of copper were not uncommon among the
Indians, and the metal must have been much more in demand before the
white man introduced iron kettles and steel knives.
The explorers did not go down the other side of the ridge, which was
steep and abrupt, but turned back and descended the more gradual slope
they had come up, finding old pits most of the way to the base. The
place was of great interest to the boys and they were reluctant to leave
it, but Nangotook seemed to have some urgent reason for getting back to
camp. When they arrived there, he borrowed the knife he had given to
Ronald, saying he wanted to make something, and then told the lads that
he wished to be left alone and that they had better go fish.
Understanding that his preparations for mining, whatever they might be,
were of some secret nature, connected undoubtedly with the superstitions
and ritual of the mining clan, Ronald and Jean launched the canoe again
and paddled up the cove. Their fishing was successful, and, after they
had caught enough for supper and breakfast, they decided to explore the
cove to its head. A little beyond the place where they had landed with
Nangotook, Jean called Ronald's attention to a big, white-headed eagle
perched on a dead limb of a tall, isolated pine near the shore. While
they were watching the bird, it suddenly spread its great wings, left
its perch and sailed away. As the boys drew near the spot, they could
see, far up in the tall tree, a solid mass of something. "An eagle's
nest," cried Ronald. "I never had a good look at one." And he turned the
canoe towards shore.
"There will be no young. They have flown long ere this," Jean answered,
"and the nest is only a collection of sticks."
"I'm going to have a look at it though," was Ronald's reply. And he did,
climbing at least fifty feet up the tall pine to examine the nest of
sticks and moss. He found it to be five feet or more across the top and
at least as many deep, and he guessed from its construction that it had
been used for several years, additions having been built on every year.
Before he descended, he took a long look from his high perch over water,
shore and woods. As he glanced about, his eye was arrested by something
that surprised him greatly. From a clump of birches at the foot of a
slope across the cove, a slender thread of smoke was ascending. It was
a very faint wisp of white, as if from a small, clear flamed cooking
fire, but the lad's eyes were keen and he was sure he could not be
deceived. As soon as he had made certain that it was really smoke he
saw, he descended quickly and told Jean of the discovery.
"It may be merely an Indian or two come here for copper," he said.
"And it may be Le Forgeron Tordu still on our track," Jean added.
"If it is, he'll gain nothing by following us now," Ronald replied. "We
shall not lead him to the Island of Yellow Sands this year, that is
certain."
"No," answered Jean with a laugh, "if he is following us for that, we
have cheated him sorely. We may take that much comfort for not having
found the island ourselves. He will be in a fine rage when he discovers
he has had his journey all for nothing."
"He will surely," Ronald chuckled, "but," he added more seriously,
"he'll seek some way to make us smart for the trick we've played him, we
may be sure of that. He'll hate us more deeply, and Le Forgeron's hate
is not to be despised."
"It were best for us to keep out of his way then," the French youth
replied soberly. "It may be that he does not know yet that we are
anywhere near. Instead of going on to the end of this bay, we will
return and tell Etienne what we have seen. If he chooses, he can spy
upon that camp. We had best leave such spying to him, who is more
skilled at it than we are."
For once Ronald agreed to the more cautious course. As they returned
down the cove, they caught a glimpse of three caribou on an open slope,
and the sight almost drove the thought of the Twisted Blacksmith out of
their heads. The hillside was probably a regular feeding ground, for,
even from the water, the light colored patches of reindeer moss could be
seen plainly among the dark green trailing juniper. A caribou would
furnish a good supply of meat for the three, as soon as they had the
means to shoot it. To secure such large game with bow and arrow would
not be easy, for they would have to creep up very close for a good shot,
but they had confidence in Etienne's skill with the bow, if not in their
own.
The lads reached their camping ground just as the sun was setting, eager
to tell the Ojibwa of the wisp of smoke and the caribou, but they did
not have a chance that night. He was nowhere to be seen when they
landed. On searching for him, they came upon a small lodge of bark and
poles concealed behind a clump of birches, several hundred yards from
their camp. The lodge was tightly closed, and steam was issuing in wisps
from little interstices between the bark sheets. The Indian had built a
sweating lodge, and had sealed himself up in it. On red hot stones he
had thrown water to make a steam bath. His tunic, leggings and moccasins
hanging on a tree were further proof of what he was about.
"This is why he would not eat," said Jean. "He was fasting, and now he
is purifying himself after the savage custom. That is what he meant by
preparing for the mining. It is doubtless part of the ceremony
performed by the savage miners whenever they come to Minong."
Ronald shook his head. "If all the savages, who pretend to be
Christians, go back to their old heathen customs whenever occasion
offers, as Etienne does, I fear they're not very well converted," he
said.
Jean nodded. "The good fathers thought him one of the best," he replied,
"and indeed he is. My father says Etienne comes nearer to living a
Christian life than any other savage convert he has ever known. But I am
afraid it takes many years and much care and teaching to purge out the
old heathen notions from the heart of a savage. Their people have been
heathens for so long, you see, and they have so many customs and
ceremonies and traditions that have come down from generation to
generation. Perhaps we need not wonder that they are not made into new
men in a few years."
XXIII
MINING AND HUNTING
When Etienne emerged from the sweating lodge, he took a swift dip in the
lake, but refused to eat, and went at once to his couch of balsam
branches. It was not until morning that the boys told him about the
smoke wisp Ronald had seen and the caribou on the ridge. He made no
comment and again refused food. While the lads were preparing breakfast,
he went to examine his snares, and returned with two hares. The
appearance of the animals was a strong reminder that winter was not far
off, for they had begun to change their grayish-brown summer coats for
the winter white. The feet, ears, nose, front of the head and part of
the legs of one of them were conspicuously white, though the rest of its
fur remained brown. The coats of the others did not show so much change.
After the lads had finished their breakfast, the three launched the
canoe, putting into it a cedar shovel and three large birch buckets the
Indian had made. They went ashore not far from their former place of
landing, and Nangotook led them to the foot of a ridge, where a stream
flowed through a narrow, swampy valley. There they filled the buckets,
and then climbed up a well defined and partly cleared trail to the
summit. Close to the edge they came upon a pit that showed plain signs
of having been worked in recent years. It was without trees or bushes,
though the sides were partly covered with moss and trailing plants. On
the bottom, surrounded by leaves, sticks and earth, and standing in
shallow water, which, that morning, bore a thin coating of ice, was a
detached mass of rock that might have weighed two tons. Even from the
edge of the hole, Jean and Ronald could see that the rock was composed
largely of copper. A primitive ladder, made of a single pole with cross
pieces tied on with strips of rawhide, rested against the side of the
pit. Though grayed and stained by the weather, the ladder seemed
perfectly sound, and the boys scrambled down, eager to examine the rock
mass.
They found that the copper rock rested on poles, and was held away from
the farther wall of the pit by the trunk of a tree wedged behind it.
Around it, in the shallow water and leaves, were many stone hammers,
most of them broken, and heaps of charred and blackened sticks. Jean,
poking about in the rubbish to get out one of the round stones,
uncovered a large bowl of cedar wood, that had been almost entirely
buried. Nangotook had not followed the lads down into the pit. Looking
up, they noticed that he had kindled a small fire almost on the edge,
and was carefully placing something in the flames.
"He is making a sacrifice," whispered Jean to Ronald, "that is what he
brought the fish head for."
Nangotook had carried with him from camp a fish's head carefully wrapped
in a bit of birch bark. From the odor that drifted down to them, the
boys knew he had also offered up some of his precious kinni-kinnik,
tobacco mixed with bearberry leaves. Standing on the edge of the pit as
the burnt offering was consumed, he gazed down at the copper rock and
said a few words in his own language. Then, apparently satisfied that
the required ceremonies had all been performed, he climbed down the
ladder and prepared to begin work.
With the cedar shovel, he scraped off the rubbish that had accumulated
on top of the rock. The pure copper showed plainly in a number of
places, but it was evident that much work had been done on the mass, for
all the knobs and projections had been hammered away, leaving the
surface almost smooth. There seemed to be no place where any of the
metal could be broken off, and the boys wondered how Nangotook would
manage without steel tools. The Indian did not seem concerned, however.
He examined the surface carefully, then ordered the lads to collect
kindling and fuel. One side of the mass was composed of what appeared to
be a thin sheet of dark rock. On top, just where the free copper and
this dark rock came together, Nangotook made a fire, feeding it until it
burned hot and clear. When he thought the surface had been heated
sufficiently, he hastily scraped off the embers, and picking up a bucket
of water he had placed within reach, dashed it quickly over the hot
rock. A cloud of steam arose, there was a sharp, cracking report, and a
thin piece of rock split off from the mass and fell into the puddle
below. Seizing the second pail, which Ronald swung up to him, the Indian
emptied it, then followed with the third. The cold water striking the
hot surface had split off a part of the sheet of dark rock, but had not
exposed enough of the copper to satisfy the Indian miner. Twice he
repeated the process, making a hot fire, raking it off when the rock was
thoroughly heated, and throwing cold water on it. After the third
operation he gave a grunt of satisfaction. A ledge of copper lay
exposed.
Raising one of the heavy stones, he struck it against the exposed metal
and broke off a small corner. Pure copper is a comparatively soft metal,
and heating and dashing with cold water anneals or softens it still
more. With a heavy stone maul and, part of the time, with the aid of a
wedge-shaped piece of hard rock used as a chisel, Nangotook hammered and
split off pieces of the metal. The boys would gladly have helped him
with his laborious mining, but he would not let them take part in the
actual operations. They might carry water from the stream, gather fuel
for the fire, find and hand him another stone sledge when he splintered
the one he was using, but the actual processes of fire making, rock
splitting and beating off copper, he would not permit them to share.
Evidently by Ojibwa tradition, this peculiar mining had something of a
sacred or mysterious character, and, to his mind, must be performed by
one of his own medicine clan, duly appointed, initiated and trained for
the work. The boys knew enough of Indian customs to understand this, so
they did not urge their help upon him, but merely obeyed orders.
Such mining was slow work. The rock had to be heated and cooled several
times, and the wielding of the stone maul was heavy labor, but at last
Nangotook obtained copper enough for his immediate purpose. As they were
returning down the cove, he told the boys that the pit where they had
been working was the same he and his companions had taken metal from on
his previous visit to the island, and the only one he knew of that had
been worked in recent years. Jean had picked up a stone hammer with a
groove around it, and he showed it to the Indian and asked him what the
groove was for. Nangotook answered that a handle of some sort had been
attached to the boulder. One of the party he had come to the island with
had used such a hammer, he remembered, with a withe twisted about it to
hold it by, but he had broken the stone and had thrown it aside.
Nangotook thought this might be the very stone. It was not customary to
use handles, he said, but he did not know why. Ronald asked how the
copper mass came to be in the bottom of the pit. Had it been split off
from the side, or was it found by digging down? Nangotook could not
answer the question. The rock had been in the same place when he was
there before, though then it was well covered with moss and earth, as if
it had not been disturbed for a number of years. The tree trunk wedged
behind it had been there too, but he and his companions had made the
ladder.
No wisp of smoke, was to be seen where Ronald had noticed it the day
before, but caribou were again discovered feeding on the ridge, near the
spot where the lads had caught a glimpse of them.
The rest of the day and evening were spent in bow and arrow making.
Laying a piece of copper on a hard, smooth stone, Nangotook hammered it
out with another stone, heating the metal and plunging it in water from
time to time, to keep it soft enough to be worked without cracking. When
it was hammered out thin at the edge, he could cut it with a knife.
After an arrowhead had been properly shaped, he went over it carefully
with light, quick blows, to harden it as much as possible without
getting it out of shape. Even at the best, copper heads were somewhat
soft, but they did not split and warp like bone tips. Their main
advantage over stone ones was that they could be made in much less time.
Moreover flints suitable for arrowheads were difficult to find.
Nangotook made a few sharp pointed bone tips in addition to the copper
ones. The latter were attached to shafts of serviceberry wood in the
same way as the flint and bone heads, and the shafts were straightened
by being pulled through the hole in the piece of bone the Indian had
used in his former arrow making. A gull, which Jean caught in a snare,
baited with a piece of fish and set on the rocks, furnished feathers for
the arrows. Hawk or eagle feathers would have been better, Nangotook
insisted, but he had no way of obtaining either without ammunition or
finished arrows. He also made another bow, using hare sinew well twisted
and braided.
The weather next day was favorable for continuing the journey, but the
lads were eager for a caribou hunt, not only for the sake of the sport,
but because they sorely needed the nourishing meat. So departure was
postponed. When the three reached the place where the animals had been
seen the day before, they found distinct trails running in two
directions. As they had guessed, the rocky ridge, where the reindeer
lichen grew in abundance, was a favorite caribou resort. The hunters
decided to separate, Nangotook following one trail and the boys the
other. They had only two bows, so Ronald was without a weapon.
Along the top of the ridge, the lads followed the trail, going quietly
and cautiously not to disturb the game, if it should happen to be near
by. As Jean, who was in advance with the bow, rounded a thicket of
leafless bushes, he came upon a place where fire, kindled perhaps by
lightning striking a tree, had swept the ridge summit. Small birches,
alders and low bushes had grown up among the fallen and standing
skeletons of the evergreens, and, scratching about among the underbrush
and fallen leaves, were a flock of birds. With a backward gesture, Jean
motioned to Ronald, who was just behind him, to stand still. Creeping
forward a little to get within range, he fitted an arrow to the string,
drew it back and let fly. So swiftly and noiselessly did the arrow
pierce the bird, that the rest of the flock did not take fright, and
Jean had a chance to make a second shot. That time the whistling of the
shaft alarmed the birds. Some of them ran off into the brush, while
three rose with a loud whirring noise and a swift direct flight that
carried them out of range in a moment. However, Jean had secured two
plump, full grown, sharp-tailed grouse. The hunting expedition had
begun well.
Not far beyond the spot where Jean killed the grouse, the boys came to a
fresh caribou trail, made that morning they were sure, which crossed the
older one. They followed the new track, going more cautiously than ever,
for the beast might be just ahead. The trail led them down the side of
the ridge, and across a bog covered with sphagnum moss stiff with the
frost of the night before. There the animal had stopped several times to
feed. After a somewhat winding course through the bog, it had climbed
another hill beyond.
Jean had a feeling that, when he came to the top of that hill, he would
find his game sunning itself in the open. So he bade Ronald keep back,
and went very carefully. Through a leafless bush he caught sight of
spreading antlers. Cautiously he crept around the bush. He could see the
animal's head and horns above a clump of tiny balsams, but the little
trees hid the body. Moreover the range was too great for Jean's skill
and strength. Etienne might have sent a shaft from that distance with a
strong enough pull to pierce his game, but Jean felt sure that he could
not do so. He must go nearer. Fortunately the wind was blowing towards
the hunter, and the beast was wholly unaware of the danger threatening.
It lowered its head to graze, and Jean crept forward towards the clump
of balsams. He reached them safely, without betraying himself by so much
as a snapped twig or the rustle of a dry leaf. Crouching behind the
little trees, he peeped around them.
The caribou's body was plainly exposed, and so close that the boy felt
he could not miss. Straightening himself suddenly but noiselessly, he
drew back his bowstring and let fly. He struck the beast squarely, but
though he had aimed for the heart, his arrow evidently did not pierce
that vital spot. The caribou felt the sting of the wound, sprang into
the air and was off at a great pace. After it sped Jean, his moccasined
feet scarcely seeming to touch the rocks, moss and intervening low
bushes, as he cleared them.
XXIV
NANGOTOOK'S DISAPPEARANCE
Had the caribou not been badly wounded, pursuit would have been
hopeless, but it was bleeding freely, as its trail showed. Nevertheless
it led the boys a long chase, down the hillside, along thickly wooded,
low ground, through a gap between ridges and to the edge of a brook.
There, exhausted by loss of blood, it sank down among the thick
underbrush. But when it caught sound or scent of the hunters, the beast
struggled to its feet again, and attempted to cross the stream. Jean,
pushing through the bushes, caught sight of it, and let fly another
arrow. He hit his mark, and the caribou fell before it could reach the
other side.
After the lads had recovered their breath, they pulled the dead animal
out of the shallow water. To take such a load up the ridge would be hard
work, and Ronald suggested that they try following the brook.
"It empties into the cove of course," he said. "When we reach there, one
of us can go back along shore for the canoe."