“We must make clothes of skins as soon as we get enough,” said Hector; “Louis, I think you can manufacture a bone needle; we can pierce the holes with the strong thorns, or a little round bone bodkin, that can be easily made.”
“The first rainy day, we will see what we can do,” replied Louis; “but I am full of my canoe just now.”
“Indeed, Louis, I believe you never think of anything else; but even if we had a canoe to-morrow, I do not think that either you or I could manage one,” said cautions Hector.
“I could soon learn, as others have done before me. I wonder who first taught the Indians to make canoes, and venture out on the lakes and streams. Why should we be more stupid than these untaught heathens? I have listened so often to my father’s stories and adventures when he was out lumbering on the St. John’s river, that I am as familiar with the idea of a boat, as if I had been born in one. Only think now, ma belle,” he said, turning to Catharine; “just think of the fish—the big ones we could get if we had but a canoe to push out from the shore beyond those rush-beds.”
“It strikes me, Louis, that those rush-beds, as you call them, must be the Indian rice that we have seen the squaws make their soup of.”
“Yes; and you remember old Jacob used to talk of a fine lake that he called Rice Lake, somewhere to the northward of the Cold Springs, where he said there was plenty of game of all kinds, and a fine open place, where people could see through the openings among the trees. He said it was a great hunting-place for the Indians in the fall of the year, and that they came there to gather in the harvest of wild rice.”
“I hope the Indians will not come here and find us out,” said Catharine, shuddering; “I think I should be more frightened at the Indians than at the wolves. Have we not heard fearful tales of their cruelty?”
“But we have never been harmed by them; they have always been civil enough when they came to the Springs.” “They came, you know, for food, or shelter, or something that they wanted from us; but it may be different when they find us alone and unprotected, encroaching upon their hunting grounds.”
“The place is wide enough for us and them; we will try and make them our friends.”
“The wolf and the lamb do not lie down in the fold together,” observed Hector. “The Indian is treacherous. The wild man and the civilized man do not live well together, their habits and dispositions are so contrary the one to the other. We are open, and they are cunning, and they suspect our openness to be only a greater degree of cunning than their own—they do not understand us. They are taught to be revengeful, and we are taught to forgive our enemies. So you see that what is a virtue with the savage, is a crime with the Christian. If the Indian could be taught the word of God, he might be kind and true, and gentle as well as brave.”