The sun had now risen in cloudless glory--all was life and movement. I
strayed and loitered for full three hours along the shore, I hardly knew
whither, sitting down occasionally under the shadow of a cliff or cedar
fence to rest, and watching the operations of the Indian families. It
were endless to tell you of each individual group or picture as
successively presented before me. But there were some general features
of the scene which struck me at once. There were more than one hundred
lodges, and round each of these lurked several ill-looking,
half-starved, yelping dogs. The women were busied about their children,
or making fires and cooking, or pounding Indian corn, in a primitive
sort of mortar, formed of part of a tree hollowed out, with a heavy rude
pestle which they moved up and down, as if churning. The dress of the
men was very various--the cotton shirt, blue or scarlet leggings, and
deer-skin mocassins and blanket coat, were most general; but many had no
shirt nor vest, merely the cloth leggings, and a blanket thrown round
them as drapery; the faces of several being most grotesquely painted.
The dress of the women was more uniform,--a cotton shirt, and cloth
leggings and mocassins, and a dark blue blanket. Necklaces, silver
armlets, silver earrings, and circular plates of silver fastened on the
breast, were the usual ornaments of both sexes. There may be a general
equality of rank among the Indians; but there is evidently all that
inequality of condition which difference of character and intellect
might naturally produce; there were rich wigwams and poor wigwams; whole
families ragged, meagre, and squalid, and others gay with dress and
ornaments, fat and well-favoured: on the whole, these were beings quite
distinct from any Indians I had yet seen, and realised all my ideas of
the wild and lordly savage. I remember I came upon a family group,
consisting of a fine tall young man and two squaws; one had a child
swaddled in one of their curious bark cradles, which she composedly hung
up against the side of the wigwam. They were then busied launching a
canoe, and in a moment it was dancing upon the rippling waves: one woman
guided the canoe, the other paddled; the young man stood in the prow in
a striking and graceful attitude, poising his fish-spear in his hand.
When they were about a hundred yards from the shore, suddenly I saw the
fish-spear darted into the water, and disappear beneath it; as it sprang
up again to the surface, it was rapidly seized, and a large fish was
sticking to the prongs; the same process was repeated with unerring
success, and then the canoe was paddled back to the land. The young man
flung his spear into the bottom of the canoe, and, drawing his blanket
round him, leapt on shore, and lounged away without troubling himself
farther; the women drew up the canoe, kindled a fire, and suspended the
fish over it, to be cooked _a la mode Indienne_.
There was another group which amused me exceedingly: it was a large
family, and, compared with some others, they were certainly people of
distinction and substance, rich in beads, blankets, and brass kettles,
with "all things handsome about them;" they had two lodges and two
canoes. But I must begin by making you understand the construction of an
Indian lodge,--such, at least, as those which now crowded the shore.
Eight or twelve long poles are stuck in the ground in a circle, meeting
at a point at the top, where they are all fastened together. The
skeleton thus erected is covered over, thatched in some sort with mats,
or large pieces of birch bark, beginning at the bottom, and leaving an
opening at top for the emission of smoke: there is a door about four
feet high, before which a skin or blanket is suspended; and as it is
summer time, they do not seem particular about closing the chinks and
apertures.[22] As to the canoes, they are uniformly of birch bark,
exceedingly light, flat-bottomed, and most elegant in shape, varying in
size from eighteen to thirty-six feet in length, and from a foot and a
half to four feet in width. The family I have mentioned were preparing
to embark, and were dismantling their wigwams and packing up their
goods, not at all discomposed by my vicinity, as I sat on a bank
watching the whole process with no little interest. The most striking
personage in this group was a very old man, seated on a log of wood,
close upon the edge of the water; his head was quite bald, excepting a
few gray hairs which were gathered in a tuft at the top, and decorated
with a single feather--I think an eagle's feather; his blanket of
scarlet cloth was so arranged as to fall round his limbs in graceful
folds, leaving his chest and shoulders exposed; he held a green umbrella
over his head, (a gift or purchase from some white trader,) and in the
other hand a long pipe--and he smoked away, never stirring, nor taking
the slightest interest in anything which was going on. Then there were
two fine young men, and three women, one old and hideous, with matted
grizzled hair, the youngest really a beautiful girl about fifteen. There
were also three children; the eldest had on a cotton shirt, the breast
of which was covered with silver ornaments. The men were examining the
canoes, and preparing to launch them; the women were taking down their
wigwams, and as they uncovered them, I had an opportunity of observing
the whole interior economy of their dwellings.
The ground within was spread over with mats, two or three deep, and
skins and blankets, so as to form a general couch: then all around the
internal circle of the wigwam were ranged their goods and chattels in
very tidy order; I observed wooden chests, of European make, bags of
woven grass, baskets and cases of birch bark (called _mokkuks_,) also
brass kettles, pans, and, to my surprise, a large coffee-pot of queen's
metal.
When all was arranged, and the canoes afloat, the poles of the wigwams
were first placed at the bottom, then the mats and bundles, which served
apparently to sit on, and the kettles and chests were stowed in the
middle; the old man was assisted by the others into the largest canoe;
women, children, and dogs followed; the young men stood in the stern
with their paddles as steersmen; the women and boys squatted down; each
with a paddle;--with all this weight, the elegant buoyant little canoes
scarcely sank an inch deeper in the water--and in this guise away they
glided with surprising swiftness over the sparkling waves, directing
their course eastwards for the Manitoolin Islands, where I hope to see
them again. The whole process of preparation and embarkation did not
occupy an hour.
[Footnote 22: I learned subsequently, that the cone-like form of the
wigwam is proper to the Ottawas and Pottowottomies, and that the oblong
form, in which the branches or poles are bent over at top in an arch, is
proper to the Chippewa tribe. But as this latter is more troublesome to
erect, the former construction is usually adopted by the Chippewas also
in their temporary encampments.]
* * * * *