"They keep it that way all winter, and it gets a good deal below zero here," he said.
"But why do they do it?" old Shylock demanded.
"It is part of their religion. They believe that the god comes in that window. They want it open, so that he can come in whenever he wishes. It offends them greatly when you stick your head through that window."
Pat tried it just to see what would happen, just like a man who looks into the barrel of a gun, or a man who takes a watch apart, or wants to hit a "dud" with a hammer just to see whether it is a dud. The result was bad. There was a sudden series of outlandish yells from the household. I think that every man, woman and child, including the dogs, of which there were many, started at once. I wonder now how Pat escaped alive, and only under the assumption that "the good die young" can I explain his escape.
I wanted some arrows to take to America as souvenirs; and, when an old Indian pulled out a lot of metal arrows on long bows with which he had killed more than a hundred bears, I was not satisfied. They were not the kind of arrows I wanted.
"What kind are you looking for?" I was asked.
"Flint arrow-heads," I responded.
"Why, man, these Indians have known the use of metals for five hundred years. The stone age with them is half a thousand years in the past."
"Have they a history?" I wanted to know.
My interpreter, who has much knowledge of these things, having worked among them for years, said, "All of the Japanese mythology is centered about the battles that took place when these Indians were driven out of Japan proper step by step."