The lads reached their camping ground just as the sun was setting, eager to tell the Ojibwa of the wisp of smoke and the caribou, but they did not have a chance that night. He was nowhere to be seen when they landed. On searching for him, they came upon a small lodge of bark and poles concealed behind a clump of birches, several hundred yards from their camp. The lodge was tightly closed, and steam was issuing in wisps from little interstices between the bark sheets. The Indian had built a sweating lodge, and had sealed himself up in it. On red hot stones he had thrown water to make a steam bath. His tunic, leggings and moccasins hanging on a tree were further proof of what he was about.
“This is why he would not eat,” said Jean. “He was fasting, and now he is purifying himself after the savage custom. That is what he meant by preparing for the mining. It is doubtless part of the ceremony performed by the savage miners whenever they come to Minong.”
Ronald shook his head. “If all the savages, who pretend to be Christians, go back to their old heathen customs whenever occasion offers, as Etienne does, I fear they’re not very well converted,” he said.
Jean nodded. “The good fathers thought him one of the best,” he replied, “and indeed he is. My father says Etienne comes nearer to living a Christian life than any other savage convert he has ever known. But I am afraid it takes many years and much care and teaching to purge out the old heathen notions from the heart of a savage. Their people have been heathens for so long, you see, and they have so many customs and ceremonies and traditions that have come down from generation to generation. Perhaps we need not wonder that they are not made into new men in a few years.”
[XXIII]
MINING AND HUNTING
When Etienne emerged from the sweating lodge, he took a swift dip in the lake, but refused to eat, and went at once to his couch of balsam branches. It was not until morning that the boys told him about the smoke wisp Ronald had seen and the caribou on the ridge. He made no comment and again refused food. While the lads were preparing breakfast, he went to examine his snares, and returned with two hares. The appearance of the animals was a strong reminder that winter was not far off, for they had begun to change their grayish-brown summer coats for the winter white. The feet, ears, nose, front of the head and part of the legs of one of them were conspicuously white, though the rest of its fur remained brown. The coats of the others did not show so much change.
After the lads had finished their breakfast, the three launched the canoe, putting into it a cedar shovel and three large birch buckets the Indian had made. They went ashore not far from their former place of landing, and Nangotook led them to the foot of a ridge, where a stream flowed through a narrow, swampy valley. There they filled the buckets, and then climbed up a well defined and partly cleared trail to the summit. Close to the edge they came upon a pit that showed plain signs of having been worked in recent years. It was without trees or bushes, though the sides were partly covered with moss and trailing plants. On the bottom, surrounded by leaves, sticks and earth, and standing in shallow water, which, that morning, bore a thin coating of ice, was a detached mass of rock that might have weighed two tons. Even from the edge of the hole, Jean and Ronald could see that the rock was composed largely of copper. A primitive ladder, made of a single pole with cross pieces tied on with strips of rawhide, rested against the side of the pit. Though grayed and stained by the weather, the ladder seemed perfectly sound, and the boys scrambled down, eager to examine the rock mass.
They found that the copper rock rested on poles, and was held away from the farther wall of the pit by the trunk of a tree wedged behind it. Around it, in the shallow water and leaves, were many stone hammers, most of them broken, and heaps of charred and blackened sticks. Jean, poking about in the rubbish to get out one of the round stones, uncovered a large bowl of cedar wood, that had been almost entirely buried. Nangotook had not followed the lads down into the pit. Looking up, they noticed that he had kindled a small fire almost on the edge, and was carefully placing something in the flames.
“He is making a sacrifice,” whispered Jean to Ronald, “that is what he brought the fish head for.”