Much to the surprise of Ray, Ganawa even built a fire, which he did by striking the edge of a piece of flint with a small piece of steel and catching the sparks on a piece of dry soft punk. This method of making fire was an improvement on the bow and fire-stick, which the Indians used before they came into contact with white traders. Steel, flint, and tinder are much more portable than the bow, stick, and block of dry wood used during the Stone Age of the human race, and now revived for an interesting and [[46]]valuable exercise in woodcraft by the Boy Scouts. It was also easier for a hunter to keep dry a small piece of tinder than to carry or make the older fire-making tools, especially in rainy weather.
Ganawa had another surprise in store for Ray. He produced a small package of tea and a little brown sugar. To have a drink of sweet tea was more of a treat to Ray than a box of the best candy is to a modern boy or girl, and Ray danced and shouted with joy when he saw what Ganawa was doing. Since Bruce and Ray had been with the Indians they had eaten nothing but meat and fish.
Indians were seldom more provident than white boys are in camp. The Indians around Lake Superior knew of only two kinds of vegetable food which they could gather and keep in quantities: wild rice and blueberries. The supplies of both had been exhausted in Winnego’s camp and the new crop was not yet ripe.
There was, however, no scarcity of food in [[47]]camp. Moose meat, venison, grouse, and ducks were all plentiful. With the Indians, there could not be a closed season, because they lived largely on game; but as a general rule, they did not waste any wild meat. If for instance it was too difficult to carry the meat of a moose to camp, the camp was moved to the moose and remained there until the moose was eaten up.
No decent white man or boy, however, should ever kill game in the closed season. The Indian days and the frontier days have passed, and to obey the game laws is as much a duty of a good citizen as to obey other laws. Unless that is done there will soon be no game left to hunt at any time.
One may, however, always hunt with a camera. Animals and birds shot with a camera will keep and be a treasure for a lifetime, and hunting with a camera is a finer and harder sport than hunting with a gun.
As told before, Bruce and Ray did not go hungry, for moose meat or venison, either [[48]]fresh or dried, is very good food, and there are no better fresh-water fish in the world than the whitefish, lake trout, and brook trout caught in Lake Superior, but Ray often wished for some flour and hominy.
Ganawa gave his white sons about an hour to eat and rest at Coppermine Point. Then he steered the canoe almost straight north and he told them that for the night he intended to make camp at the mouth of the Agawa River.
“That is a long river,” he told his sons, “and it runs through a deep and beautiful canyon, where the trout live, those that are colored like the rainbow. My little son should be able to catch some big ones at the mouth of the Agawa,” he added with a friendly smile.
“How big are they?” asked Ray.