INDIAN HUT.
THE LITTLE INDIAN OF CLEAR LAKE.
ABRIDGED FROM GOSPEL IN ALL LANDS.
Did you ever see an Indian—a real, live Indian—in bead-embroidered buck-skin coat and breeches, girded with a curiously wrought wampum belt, shod with moccasins, his face painted black and red, his hair bristling, like a porcupine’s back, with a gay forest of feathers—as he dashed through the woods or over the prairie, on a wild horse, or strode along proudly on foot, with bow and arrows in his hands, and a large tomahawk and scalping-knife in his girdle?
You have seen him in the pictures, at least, and thought him a fine sight; and perhaps you felt in your heart that it must be fine to live such a wild, daring life, hunting, fishing and roaming in the woods and over the fields.
But all Indians are not like him. Tribes differ very much in their character and habits. Besides, they are never quite so brave and fine in real life as they are in pictures. Most of them are poor miserable creatures; and if you should go into one of their wigwams of sticks and barks, and see their naked bodies, filthy faces and tangled hair, as they squat in the smoke and stench around a little fire, on the bare earth, in the middle of the shanty, snatching at poor food with dirty fingers, like a pack of ravenous wolves. I do not believe you would think it very fine, ever after have the least desire to live like an Indian.
The little boy of our story was born and lived on the shores of Clear Lake, a fine sheet of water among the mountains, thirty or forty miles north of Napo Valley.
Like all his mates, he was so short and thick that he seemed to be about as broad as he was long. His skin was not copper-colored like that of most other Indians, but black. His face was broad and round, his lips thick and pouting, and his nose wide and flat. His long coarse hair, all tangled and matted, dangled around his high cheek-bones and above his naked shoulders, like the shaggy mane of a Canadian pony, and half hid his coarse, brutal features: a pair of small, round, dull eyes, like leaden bullets, made the treacherous expression that slept in every line of his features seem ten-fold more revolting.
His wigwam, or lodge, was nothing but a rude screen of bushes or skins to break the force of the wind. You would not think it very nice or comfortable, but he did, and could sleep just as well there, or on the ground beside a large stone, or behind the stump of a fallen tree as you do on the softest feathers. But he never slept two nights in the same place, for fear of being discovered by an enemy and murdered.
It is a hard and cheerless life which those little Indian children lead, as you can easily see, but the life of this little Indian was especially so; for his father and mother had both been murdered, and he had no friends to care for him any more kindly than they would care for a dog; and even the Hias Tyee, or Big Chief of the tribe, whose duty it was to see that this little waif on the stormy sea of Indian life was provided for, thought only to get some advantage out of him; and so, when he saw a white man camping one day on the shores of the lake, he brought down the boy and offered to sell him for ten dollars. It proved to be a kind, good-hearted man, who saw that the little fellow was friendless and forlorn, and so the bargain was soon closed, and he became servant to the “pale-face” till he was twenty-one years old, on condition of receiving his food and clothing.