Around the inner circumference of the wigwam, ran a broad rustic bench, supported by forked sticks and thickly strewn balsam boughs on which lay bearskin robes. The inner wall of the home was hung with woven reed mats, bearing designs in color, of angular figures and conventional floral motifs. Over Terrible-eagle’s head, on smoke encrusted poles, swung several mat-covered, oval bundles, festooned with age-blackened gourd rattles, war clubs, and utensils and weapons of unusual portent. These were his sacred war and hunting bundles, packets of charms whose use and accompanying formulæ he had obtained personally from the Gods, while fasting, or purchased at a great price from others more fortunate than he. For Terrible-eagle was a renowned war leader, a hunter, and the greatest of all Mätc Mitäwûk, Masters of the Grand Medicine Society, a secret fraternal and medical organization, to which, in one form or another, nearly every Indian of influence in all the Great Lakes and Central Western region belonged.
The door covering was quietly thrust aside and Anäm, a wolf-like dog, trotted in to curl up by the fire, while after him, first dropping a load of faggots from her shoulders, stumbled Wábano-mitämu, Dawn-woman, wife of Terrible-eagle, who crouched down grumbling to enter the lodge, and turned on her time-gnarled knees to drag the kindlings in after her.
Roused by the noise, Terrible-eagle stretched and yawned, then reached over his head and took down a calabash-shell rattle, which he began to shake gently, while Dawn-woman shoved aside the birch-bark boxes that cluttered the floor, stirred up the fire in the round, shallow pit where it was glowing, and set among the hot embers a large, round, deep, pointed-bottomed kettle of brown earthenware, the base of which she screwed into the ashes by a quick, circular twist of the rim. Into this kettle she poured some water from a birch-bark pail; and, when it began to simmer, added a quantity of wild rice, smoked meat, and dried berries, which she stirred with an elaborate wooden-spoon paddle.
The random swish of Terrible-eagle’s rattle now began to articulate itself in the form of a tune, the motif of which might have been borrowed from the night babblings and murmurings of a woodland brook. It rose like the prattle of water racing down stony riffles; it fell to the purring monotone of a little fall burbling into a deep pool.
Then, suddenly, Terrible-eagle raised his voice in song—a song without meaning to the uninitiated—yet a song potent with the powers of Manitous, and ancient as the pine forests.
“Ni mánituk, häwatûkuk, kê’nêäminûm.”
“You, my gods, I am singing to you!”
“Look you, old fellow,” cried Dawn-woman, squatting beside her cooking, “why do you sing that sacred song? There is no need to rehearse the chants of the Manitous when ice binds the rivers, and snow blankets the land! When new life dawns with the grass blades in the spring, then we will need to refresh our memories; not now, while the gods sleep like bears.”
“Silence, old partner! You do not know everything! Even now there comes one seeking the knowledge of the path our brethren and fellows have trod before us. Listen!”
The lodge was hushed with the heavy silence of the Wisconsin forest in midwinter. Then came the crunch and squeak of approaching snowshoes slipping over the crusted drifts.