A mode of life will be suggested by the individual's estate and
surroundings, and will, naturally, be accommodated to the exactions merely
of the society in which he moves. With the Indian, poverty shapes his
habits of life, and he bends to compulsion's decree in the matter. If
we consider his hypothetical translation to a higher sphere, the Indian
might develop and maintain a course of living which should not, in those
altered circumstances, discredit him.
As our notions of early Indian life are so associated with the wigwam,
a description of the manner and stages of its construction may be
interesting. Poles, twelve or fourteen feet long, are placed in the
ground, these meeting at the top, and leaving an opening through which
the smoke may escape. Over the poles are placed nets, made of flags,
or birch bark, and, sometimes, the skins of animals.
The Indian, in defining comfort, evidently does not mean soft beds and
generous covering. His couch, as often as not, is the bare floor, without
mattrass, or, indeed, aught that might be conceded to a weak impulse;
and his covering _nil_, as a rule, in summer, and a buffalo robe,
or some kindred substitute, in winter. He adopts very frugal fare,
doing high honour to maize, or Indian corn. Indeed, to the growth and
cultivation of this order of grain he appropriates the greater part of
his land.
In walking, the man usually goes before the woman, as he thinks it
undignified to walk alongside. Nothing like social intercourse ever goes
on between man and wife; and in their domestic experience they have no
little pursuits in common, such as cheer and brighten life with us.
The hut (for, in the majority of cases, it is really little better) that,
with excess of boldness, commingles its cramped, unpleasing outlines with
the forest's wealth of foliage; and has reared its unshapely structure on
the site of the historic wigwam, obliterating, in its ruthless, intrusive,
advent, that lingering relic of the picturesque aspect of Indian life--a
relic that, with its emblems and inner garniture of war, bids a scion
of the race indulge a prideful retrospect of his sometime grandeur,
and pristine might; that has power to invoke stirring recollections of
a momentous and a thrilling past; to re-animate and summon before him
the shadowy figures of his redoubtable sires, and re-enact their lofty
deeds: in view of which, there is wafted to him a breath, laden with
moving memories of that glorious age, when aught but pre-eminence was
foreign to his soul; when, though a rude and savage, he was yet a lordly,
being; when he owned the supremacy, brooked the dictation, of none;
when his existence was a round of joysome light-heartedness, and he,
a stranger to constraint--this habitation of the Indian, to my mind,
emphasizes his melancholy, and, perhaps, inevitable decadence, rather
than symbolizes his partnership with the white in the more palpable
pursuits of a practical, enlightened, and energetic age, or co-activity
with him on a theatre of enlarged and more vigorous action. It is in some
respects more comfortless than even was his experience under his primitive
style of living, and is usually composed of one room, answering all the
purposes of life--eating-room, bed-room, reception-room, principally,
however, for the snow and mud, which have been persuaded here to relax
their hold, after antecedent demonstration of their adhering qualities.