Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/24

Rh there until 1841, when he was sixteen years of age, and acquired a good scholastic training. He was then, and always subsequently, greatly devoted to reading, and read everything which he could get, with avidity. "While at school" (says one who knew him well) "he was greatly beloved for his amiable disposition, and genial, happy manners. He was always full of life, cheerfulness, and sociability, and insensibly attracted all who associated with him."

During his absence from home, he had, by disuse, forgotten some of the Ojibway tongue, but soon became again familiar with it, and acquired a remarkable command of it Speaking it fluently, and being connected with influential families of the tribe, he was always a welcome and petted guest at their lodge-fire circles, and it was here that his taste and fondness for the legends and traditions of the Ojibways were fostered. He speaks in his work of his love for the "lodge stories and legends of my Indian grandfathers, around whose lodge-fires I have passed many a winter evening, listening with parted lips and open ears to their interesting and most forcibly told tales." He was fond, too, of telling to the Indians stories which he had learned in his reading, and would for hours translate to them narratives from the Bible, and Arabian Nights, fairy stories, and other tales calculated to interest them. In return for this, they would narrate the legends of their race, and thus he obtained those traditions which he has, with such skill, woven into his book. He was always a great favorite with the Indians, not only on account of his relationship to them, but from his amiable and obliging disposition to them, and his interest in their welfare, being always anxious to help them in any way that he could.

His familiarity with the Ojibway tongue, and his popularity with that people, probably led him to adopt the pro-