Early candlelight stories

by Stella C. Shetter

“One day when Father and my brother Stanley were coming through our woods they heard a noise like that of some one groaning. Hunting around, they presently found the Indian, John Cornplanter, helpless and unconscious, with what turned out to be a broken leg. They carried him into the cabin in the sugar grove and Stanley went for the doctor. The doctor set his leg. For a time they thought he would die, for he had been exposed to the weather for hours before Father found him. But he got better, though slowly, and for weeks he lay on one of the bunks in the cabin, and Father took care of him and Mother sent him things he liked to eat.

“At first I was afraid to go near the cabin, but after a while I got brave enough to venture in with Father. Then it wasn’t long till Charlie and I were visiting Cornplanter every day, carrying him food and cool drinks.

“When he got better, he wove pretty baskets and carved things out of wood and made Charlie a bow and arrow. After he got well and went home, he often came back to see us, bringing presents of fish or game, or maybe a basket of wild strawberries or early greens. Charlie and I liked to walk back with him through the woods as far as the edge of our farm, and sometimes he would build a fire and we would have a meal of some kind of game, cornbread baked on a stone heated in the fire, and wild honey.

“He taught Charlie new ways to set traps and cure skins, and he showed me where the first trailing arbutus was to be found, hiding, fragrant and pink, under the brown leaves. He knew where the mistletoe grew and where the cardinal built her nest, and he could mimic any kind of a bird or animal.

“But no one knew John as we did. As he grew older his manner became gruffer and his temper shorter. People were afraid of him, and there was some talk of making him leave the country.

“In the winter he would go for miles and miles hunting and trapping, for even then game was not so plentiful as it had been. One winter Cornplanter brought a deer he had shot and dressed to Orbison’s woods and hung it in a tree, just as his people before him had done, until he should be ready to take it the rest of the way home.

“That night there was a light fall of snow. The next morning some boys on their way to school spied the deer hanging in the tree and, thinking to tease John, they moved the deer to the very top of the tree and fastened it there. Then they went on to school, not thinking but that the Indian would immediately discover the deer.

“But Cornplanter was old and his sight was poor. When he came along a little later, he saw only that the deer was not where he had left it, and, thinking that it had been stolen, he set out to follow the tracks the boys had made in the snow.