Travelling among the Chippeways may be considered a good deal safer than it is among the half savage inhabitants of the frontier. The most dangerous to deal with, are the young men, who, in civilized society, would be called “snobs.” They are idle, haughty, and revengeful, and the only right way to treat them is with the utmost coldness. Allow them to be familiar, and they will soon be impudent and overbearing. Unlike civilized barbarians, those of the wilderness know not what it is to use profane language. When they have reason to despise a man, they call him a bad dog; and when they have chastised such an one, they wear a skunk skin at one of their heels as a memento of the mean man’s disgrace.
The hospitality of the Chippeways is proverbial. When a stranger enters their cabin, he is invited to a seat on their best mat, and always treated with the very best that they possess in the way of food. Visit a chief at an untimely hour, at midnight for example, and he will arise, stir up his fire, and give you a pipe with all the air and politeness of a polished gentleman. Call upon him, when you know that he has reason to consider you his enemy, and he will not tell you to leave his wigwam, but it may be that in an unguarded moment, when in your own lodge, he will cleave your skull with a tomahawk. They are also exceedingly affectionate, and do every thing in their power to make their children happy. When a party of them are in a state of starvation, and one individual happens to have a bear or deer, he will distribute it equally at a feast. They treat their infirm people with tender care; and never refuse to present to a brother Indian any pipe, weapon, or ornament that may have been solicited. They extend the same civility to all white men whom they esteem. As the Chippeway country is mostly covered with a dense forest, this people are unacquainted with the use of the horse. Their mode of hunting the buffalo has always been to drive them over bluffs, or to shoot them while disguised in the skin of a wolf or buffalo. Their only vehicle is the birchen canoe, so famous for its beautiful model, its frailty and feathery lightness. The bark of the birch, out of which it is made, is found in great abundance throughout their entire territory, and they use it, not only for canoes, but for their lodges, their grave-houses, their baskets, their mocucks, their dishes, and exquisitely worked boxes, which they dispose of as curiosities.
CHAPTER XVI.
In my Canoe, July, 1846.
Elk or Itasca Lake is the fountain head of the Mississippi. It is thought to be almost three thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico and two thousand feet above the level of the Atlantic. It is a small sheet of water, about five miles long, one to two miles wide, and contains only one island, which lies directly in the centre. The first traveller who visited the lake was Henry R. Schoolcraft, after whom the island has been justly named. On the south side is a ridge of wood-crowned hills, which give birth to tiny streams, that eventually empty their waters into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The whole region on the north is woody, low and marshy. The water is clear, deep, and full of fish; the bottom gravelly; and the entire shore covered with reeds and rushes. The trees which abound here are the pine, oak, elm, maple, birch, and poplar; and the fish are principally the trout, pike, and black bass. The Mississippi when it leaves this lake is only about twenty feet wide, but after passing through a great number of lakes it spreads itself out to the width of one hundred and fifty feet, and empties into Red Cedar Lake. This portion of the Great River might well be likened to the infant Hercules, for it is the master of every thing around it, and rambles onward as if conscious of its dawning power. Upon the whole, however, it is through a cheerless wilderness.
The region of Elk Lake was once famous for the number of its animals, and derives its name from the following legend of a mammoth Elk. This creature is said to have measured the length of two large canoes, and with his horns had power to split a pine tree. His lair was in a valley among the neighboring hills, where he reigned supreme; and it was customary for all the animals of the north, which were of giant size in those days, to make him an annual visit. As they were so numerous, they were compelled to occupy the country for many miles around, which accounts for its excessive flatness. The object of this “world’s convention” was to consult the king of beasts as to the forests and plains they were to occupy during the following year; and to partake of the water of the small lake, which had power to protect them from every disease or accident, and such was the state of things, when an enemy made its appearance, and the reign of the Emperor Elk was ended.
Those were the days when giants inhabited the earth, and the region where most they congregated was in the far South. It so happened that a hunting party of these people wandered to the North, and finally pitched their tents in the vicinity of this lake. Among the animals they succeeded in killing was the Mammoth Elk, which they found asleep, and pierced with a poisoned arrow. The heavens were immediately filled with clouds, a heavy rain deluged the earth, and with their booty, in melancholy mood, the hunters started on their return. The rain was so abundant that the lake overflowed its banks, forming a little stream, which finally widened into a broad river, and emptied into an unknown sea; and on the bosom of this river did the hunters float in their newly made canoes, until they found themselves in their own country. The conclusion of the whole matter was, that from that year all the animals of the earth began to dwindle in size, and the men of that time were reduced in stature to the height of their younger children.
A more suggestive legend than the above I have seldom heard. To my mind, it illustrates the poetical genius of the Indian, and throws much light upon the history of the Mound Builders. I obtained it from the lips of an old Indian hermit, as I sat in his solitary lodge, at the foot of one of the hills which look down upon Elk Lake.
On the summits of those hills I spent a number of days, pondering upon the strange wild scenery which surrounded me. At one time I revelled over a morning landscape. The sun had just risen above an ocean of forests, and the sky was echoing with a thousand strains of melody. Earth was awake, and clothed in her fresh green garment. The mists had left the long low valleys, and revealed to the open sky winding rivers and lakes of surpassing loveliness. Every thing was laughing with joy under the glorious influence of the summer sun.
The elk and the deer were cropping their morning repast, with the dew-showers trickling from their sides. Gracefully did the smoke curl upward from an Indian village. The hunters were preparing for the chase. I saw them enter their canoes, silently glide down a river, and finally lose themselves among the islands of a vast swamp. None were left in that village but women and children. While the former busied themselves in their rude occupations, the latter were sporting in the sunshine, some shooting at a target, some leaping, some swimming, and others dancing.