Yellow Thunder, Our Little Indian Cousin

by Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade

Black Cloud often finds a bark picture hanging to some tree while he is hunting. It is better than any guide-post such as we make, because it will tell him so much. He will know from it that other red men have journeyed this way, and what kind of experience they had. Perhaps it will warn him of danger, or explain to him the best direction to go if he wishes to find more game.

You may like to see such a picture. I will copy one which Mr. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft saw while he was living among the Indians. He was exploring the country with a party of white men and two Indian guides. They lost their way during the day and camped out all night in a deep forest. Before they went away on the next morning, the Indian guides hung this picture on a tree:

They thought it might be of use to others passing there.

Figure I. is the officer who commanded the party. You may know this because he carries a sword. II. has a book in his hand. This shows he is the secretary. III. carries a hammer, because he is a geologist. IV. and V. are attendants. VI. is the man who interprets to the party the words of the Indian guides. The group of eight figures marked IX. consists of soldiers. Their muskets stand in the corner, and are marked X., VII. and VIII. are the two Indian guides. You will notice that they are drawn with no hats, which shows at once that they are not white men. XIII., XIV., and XV. represent fires, showing that each separate group—officers, soldiers, and Indian guides—had a separate one. Figures XI. and XII. are the pictures of a prairie-hen and a tortoise, which were the only game they had been able to kill that day. The pole to which the piece of bark was fastened leaned in the direction which the party was going to travel. There were three notches in the pole to show the distance they had already journeyed.

Yellow Thunder learns to read these bark pictures, and also to make them himself. He enjoys this work very much, and can tell a long story quickly. If I were you, I would write him a letter and ask him to answer it in his own way.

This cousin of yours has many things to keep him busy. I have already told you of the mats and baskets which he helps his mother in making. He goes with her to get the bark which she will use in mending the wigwam and making many useful things.

He makes barrels out of red elm bark in which to store groundnuts, corn, and beans. He cuts ladles out of wood, which the family will use in eating their soup and hominy. On the end of each ladle Yellow Thunder carves the figure of some animal. Perhaps it is a beaver or a squirrel. He does it very neatly. Whatever the Indian boy does, he does well.

Yellow Thunder makes sieve-baskets out of splint. His mother can sift the corn-meal through one of these as nicely as your mamma can do it with her wire sieve.

He makes salt-bottles out of corn-husks, wooden bowls and pitchers, and many other things for the simple housekeeping. All this work is done during the cold winter months, while his mother is making moccasins and kilts for his father and himself.