Ray had learned at Ganawa’s camp that the Indians had no set time for meals, but ate when they were hungry, provided there was something to eat in camp. There was no set time for anything. The women, indeed, did go in the afternoon to cut and bring in the firewood, but as it was now midsummer and no fire was needed in the tepees at night, they were not very regular in attending to this duty; although they were busy at some kind of work all day long.
The men had no such regular hours for anything as a white man must observe for his work. Their duty in times of peace was to provide the camp with meat, and to secure enough fur or dried meat so they could buy of the white traders whatever the family needed: blankets, knives, needles, steel axes, traps, and especially guns and ammunition. [[35]]There were in an Indian camp, just as there are in a white man’s town, men and families who were thrifty, and those who were shiftless and always in trouble.
All trade was carried on by barter, no money circulated in the Indian country, but a beaver skin was the standard of value.
Ray was much pleased when one of the women handed to each of the three visitors a birch-bark dish and a wooden spoon and told them to help themselves to meat in a large kettle in front of her tepee.
The ideas of Indians concerning things that are clean often differed from those of white men. The kettle contained venison and two wild ducks all boiling together; and the Indian woman had not been very careful about picking the birds.
“I can’t eat that mess,” Ray said to Bruce when he saw Ganawa help himself to a liberal portion. Ganawa smiled at this remark of the white boy. “My little son, our friends offer us good meat,” he encouraged the white lad. “Ducks keep their [[36]]feathers very clean. Fill your dish and eat, for I know you must be very hungry.”
Ray was indeed very hungry, and as he began to eat he found that the meat was good, although it had been boiled without salt or other seasoning.
Ganawa learned from the men in this camp that the brave young trader of last spring had sailed his wooden boat along the eastern shore of the Big Lake, that he had reached Michipicoten Bay, which is sheltered from all winds except those that come from the southwest. They had also heard that he had paddled up the Michipicoten River as far as the rapids below the big falls. Whether he had made a camp at that place and remained there during the winter they did not know.
A young man, however, who was known by the name of Roving Hunter, told that about twelve moons ago he and a companion had met a family of Wood-Indians, called by the Chippewas Oppimittish Ininiwac. These Wood-Indians had told him that two [[37]]white men had made a camp on the Michipicoten River, nine or ten leagues above the big falls. They had also a camp on one of the big lakes of that country. He thought from the account of the Ininiwacs that they meant Lake Anjigami. But he could not understand the language of the Ininiwacs very well, and they might have referred to some other lake, because the Michipicoten carries the water of many lakes down to Gitche Gumee.
He and his companion had paddled up the river to visit the white hunters, but when they came to a stretch of rapids two miles long, his companion became discouraged and said it was too much work to visit the camp of these white men. Perhaps they would not find the camp, even if they carried their canoe past the long rapids and the big falls. So they turned back and did not see the white men. The Ininiwacs also told him that there were many beavers on the small lakes and streams in the Michipicoten country. The three white men were trapping [[38]]beaver and marten and otter, and they had also traded some beaver skins and marten of the Ininiwacs for knives and beads and needles, but they had no blankets and guns to sell and no fire-water. But Roving Hunter, like the other Chippewas, did not know if the white men were still in the Michipicoten country.