Lost in the Backwoods: A Tale of the Canadian Forest

by Catharine Parr Strickland Traill

Even Louis was obliged to confess that the young savage knew more of the management of a canoe, and the use of the bow and arrow and the fishing-line, than either himself or his cousin. Hector was lost in admiration of her skill in all these things, and Indiana rose highly in his estimation, the more he saw of her usefulness.

"Every one to his craft," said Louis, laughing. "The little squaw has been brought up in the knowledge and practice of such matters from her babyhood; perhaps if we were to set her to knitting and spinning, milking cows, and house-work, and learning to read, I doubt if she would prove half as quick as Catharine or Mathilde."

"I wonder if she knows anything of God or our Saviour," said Hector thoughtfully.

"Who should have taught her? for the Indians are all heathens," replied Louis.

"I have heard my dear mother say the missionaries have taken great pains to teach the Indian children about Quebec and Montreal, and that so far from being stupid, they learn very readily," said Catharine.

"We must try and make Indiana learn to say her prayers. She sits quite still, and seems to take no notice of what we are doing when we kneel down before we go to bed," observed Hector.

"She cannot understand what we say," said Catharine; "for she knows so little of our language yet, that of course she cannot comprehend the prayers, which are in other sort of words than what we use in speaking of hunting, and fishing, and cooking, and such matters."

"Well, when she knows more of our way of speaking, then we must teach her. It is a sad thing for Christian children to live with an untaught pagan," said Louis, who, being rather bigoted in his creed, felt a sort of uneasiness in his own mind at the poor girl's total want of the rites of his church; but Hector and Catharine regarded her ignorance with feelings of compassionate interest, and lost no opportunity of trying to enlighten her darkened mind on the subject of belief in the God who made and the Lord who saved them. Simply and earnestly they entered into the task as a labour of love; and though for a long time Indiana seemed to pay little attention to what they said, by slow degrees the good seed took root and brought forth fruit worthy of Him whose Spirit poured the beams of spiritual light into her heart. But my young readers must not imagine these things were the work of a day: the process was slow, and so were the results, but they were good in the end.

Catharine was glad when, after many months of patient teaching, the Indian girl asked permission to kneel down with her white friend and pray to the Great Spirit and his Son in the same words that Christ Jesus gave to his disciples; and if the full meaning of that holy prayer, so full of humility and love and moral justice, was not fully understood by her whose lips repeated it, yet even the act of worship and the desire to do that which she had been told was right were, doubtless, sacrifices better than the pagan rites which that young girl had witnessed among her father's people, who, blindly following the natural impulse of man in his depraved nature, regarded bloodshed and cruelty as among the highest of human virtues, and gloried in those deeds of vengeance at which the Christian mind revolts with horror.

Indiana took upon herself the management of the rice, drying, husking, and storing it, the two lads working under her direction. She caused several forked stakes to be cut, sharpened, and driven into the ground. On these were laid four poles, so as to form a frame. Over it she stretched the bass-mat, which she secured by means of forked pegs to the frame. On the mat she then spread out the rice thinly, and lighted a fire beneath, taking good care not to let the flame set fire to the mat, the object being rather to keep up a strong, slow heat by means of the red embers. She next directed the boys to supply her with pine or cedar boughs, which she stuck in close together, so as to enclose the fire within the area of the stakes. This was done to concentrate the heat and cause it to bear upwards with more power, the rice being frequently stirred with a sort of long-handled, flat shovel. After the rice was sufficiently dried, the next thing to be done was separating it from the husk. This was effected by putting it, in small quantities, into the iron pot, and with a sort of wooden pestle or beetle rubbing it round and round against the sides. [Footnote: The Indians often make use of a very rude, primitive sort of mortar, by hollowing out a bass-wood stump, and rubbing the rice with a wooden pounder.] If they had not had the iron pot, a wooden trough must have been substituted in its stead.