Before an Indian essays this terrible leap, he offers up many prayers to the Great Spirit for help and protection, and he has at all events the satisfaction of knowing that, if he should fail, his body will be buried in the sacred ground of the nation. Those who succeed leave an arrow sticking in the rock, and have a right to boast of it at every public meeting when they are called upon to speak. No man would dare to boast of this feat without having performed it, as he would at once be challenged to visit the Leaping Rock and to point out his arrow.
If the reader will refer to the figure of [the canoe] on page 1322, he will see that its sides are decorated with a pattern. This is made by fastening dyed porcupine quills to the sides of the little vessel. Porcupine quills are used very largely for ornaments, and, even though they have been partly superseded by beads, are still in use for decorating the dresses and utensils of the natives.
These quills are never so long or thick as those of the porcupine of the Old World, and are naturally white or gray, so that they can easily take any desired dye. They are first sorted very carefully into their different sizes, the largest rarely exceeding three inches in length, while the smaller are quite thread-like, and can be passed through the eye of an ordinary needle. Both ends are sharp. When the native artist desires to produce a pattern, the design is first drawn on the right side of the bark or leather; the two ends of the quill are then pushed through the fabric, and fastened on the wrong side, the quill acting both as needle and thread.
Perhaps the most ingenious mode of making ornaments is that which is practised by the Ojibbeway women, and called Bark-biting. The following description of this curious art is given by Mr. Kohl in his “Kitchi-Gami:”—
“This is an art which the squaws chiefly practise in spring, in their sugar plantations. Still, they do not all understand it, and only a few are really talented. I heard that a very celebrated bark-biter resided at the other side of St. Mary’s River, in Canada, and that another, of the name of Angélique Marte, lived in our cataract village. Naturally, I set out at once to visit the latter.
“Extraordinary geniuses must usually be sought here, as in Paris, on the fifth floor, or in some remote faubourg. Our road to Angélique Marte led us past the little cluster of houses representing our village far into the desert. We came to morasses, and had to leap from stone to stone. Between large masses of scattered granite block, the remains of the missiles which the Indians say Menaboju and his father hurled at each other in the battle they fought here, we at length found the half-decayed birch-hut of our pagan artiste, who herself was living in it like a hermit.
“The surrounding landscape seemed better adapted for a renversi than for an atélier. When we preferred our request for some specimen of her tooth carving, she told us that all her hopes as regarded her art were concentrated in one tooth. At least she had only one in her upper jaw properly useful for this operation. She began, however, immediately selecting proper pieces of bark, peeling off the thin skin, and doubling up the pieces, which she thrust between her teeth.
“As she took up one piece after the other, and went through the operation very rapidly, one artistic production after the other fell from her lips. We unfolded the bark, and found on one the figure of a young girl, on another a bouquet of flowers, on a third a tomahawk, with all its accessories, very correctly designed, as well as several other objects. The bark is not bitten into holes, but only pressed with the teeth, so that, when the designs are held up, they resemble, to some extent, those pretty porcelain transparencies made as light-screens.”
The mode of constructing the wigwam is very much the same among the various tribes. Generally it is made of dressed buffalo skins sewed together and arranged in the form of a tent, with a score or more of poles about twenty-five feet in height, as a support, and with an opening at the apex for the escape of smoke or the admission of light. The Crows, however, excel all others in the style of their lodge. They dress the skins almost as white as linen, embellish them with porcupine quills, and paint them in various ways so as to make their tents exceedingly beautiful and picturesque.
The Indian lodges may be removed in a few minutes. The taking down and the transportation is the work of the squaws. A tribe will generally remove six or eight times in a summer in order to find good hunting grounds among the herds of buffaloes.