“To-morrow, we’ll come back and get some honey. Now let’s go home and tell Tim and Tatanka about our luck.”
CHAPTER IX—HUNTING BEES AND DRIVING FISH
Tatanka was not enthusiastic about the prospect of a bee hunt.
“The Indians,” he told his friends, “do not like the little black honey-flies. They call them white men’s flies, because they came into our country with the white man. We like Tumahga-tanka, the big bumblebee, that builds his cells in an old mouse-nest on the ground. But Tumahga-tanka is like the Indians: he gathers only very little honey food, just for a day or two. Only our small boys hunt them and take their little honey in the evening when their wings are cold and stiff so they cannot fly on the naked body of the boys and sting them.
“The little honey-flies are like white men. They gather much honey for many days of rain and for all the moons of winter. They make a store in a big tree and fill it with honey, so they can stay at home and eat honey till the maple buds break and till the wild plums and wild strawberries hang out their white flowers. They are like white men, who work all the time and gather big houses full of corn and meat and make big woodpiles for the winter.
“Tumahga-tanka is like the Indian. He travels much, he often sleeps among the flowers at night, and he is always poor and hungry like the Indian.”
“Where do the bumblebees go in winter,” asked Tim, “if they do not gather enough honey to live on?”
Tatanka did not know. “Perhaps they sleep like Mahto, the bear, or like Meetcha, the bear’s little brother.”
“Will you go with us?” asked Barker, “when we go to get the honey?”
“Yes, I will go with you,” Tatanka promised. “But I do not like to fight the little black bees. They are as many as leaves on a tree, and they will get very angry and will sting when you come to rob them of their food.”