When the women have beaten them off and learn I am not offended concerning Goodfellow's drubbing, they are pleasant to me. A thin, pock-marked squaw invites me into a shack or, more properly speaking, into a baby-warren which fairly bristles with a flock of semi-wild children, for, as yet, the squaws have not deliberately ceased from having children.
What I said awhile ago about the Indian's house applies equally to his children's wearing apparel. It shelters rather than ornaments. Their clothes seem to have no visible supports, but are held to their small fat bodies by some inexplicable attraction. One may see the same phenomenon on the apostolic figures on stained glass windows.
A chocolate-coloured baby with blackberry eyes is propped against the wall in a moss bag, and looks for all the world like a cocoon that might any moment push off its sheath and take to wings.
An unsavoury mess of entrails is stewing in a black pot and filling the house with an unpleasant odour. I try not to show my repugnance lest my hostesses consider the white woman to be proud-stomached with no proper appetite for lowly faring. I tell them as I take down the blanket from the door—not untruthfully you understand, but as a small matter of immediate expediency—how it is light one desires rather than fresh air, and that it is hard to see aright when one has been walking in the sunlight.
This Hudson's Bay blanket is, next to uskik, the kettle, the one indispensable thing in an Indian household. It serves as a door, a coat, a carpet, a bed, and for other things which it boots not to mention. It is, therefore, well to be explanatory when one removes it from its place, just as it is wise to apologize when one pokes an Englishman's fire of coals.
Mrs. Lo tells me the old woman who is making moccasins is Naka, which word, she explains for my better understanding, is the Cree for "My Mother." Naka is a very old woman and "can no English say." Neither can she be considered as typical of Whistler's mother.
There are amusing things to be done in this shack. For instance, you may by signs and smiles make Naka, my mother, to understand how you greatly desire to sew upon the moccasins she holds, and Naka may, in the amiability of her disposition, accede to your importunity.
As thread, deer sinew is not so easily manipulated as you might imagine; indeed, I should say it is distinctly uncontrollable. The audience, in spite of its manifest efforts at politeness, is nevertheless widely diverted. Who would have thought a white woman could be so droll in the woods, and so very stupid?
Huh! Huh! she may be so stupid that even old Naka, who is a proper woman with her needle, has to scrub the air with her arms and show her yellow gums in laughter.
Their always wakeful curiosity leads the maidens to enquire as to what might be inside a white woman's hand-bag, and that they may sufficiently know about this matter, the white woman empties it upon her knees. Immediately, the articles are passed around for appraisal and approval. Bank cheques! ... Oui! Oui! The men who work on the boats get these. The girls know how it is talking [Transcriber's note: taking?] paper to get money.