The Trapper's Son, by W.H.G. Kingston.
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A very short book, set in North America some time in the nineteenth
century, at a time when Indian tribes were still hunting over the
land--Crees, Dacotahs, Peigans. An old trapper and his son are
preparing for the winter, when their horses are found dead, killed
either by wolves or by Indians. So they have to cache most of the skins
they were planning to take to a nearby fort, and set off on their
journey there.
Michael Moggs, the trapper, had fathered the boy, Laurence, with an
Indian woman, who had brought Laurence up to the point where Michael
comes to collect him. The boy had never been taught the principles of
Christianity, and his father never knew them either. So most of the
book deals with the conversion of the boy and his father to true
religion, by people they meet at the fort.
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