Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/109

94 beautiful beach. They were already on the alert, the children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge, the women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on their pipes. I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at anyone's fancying it a melody. But now, when I heard the notes in their true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison with the sweetest bird-song; and this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate. The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no more thinks of playing the flute than one of the settled-down members of our society would of choosing the purple light of love as dye-stuff for a surtout.”

Of the island itself Margaret writes:—

"It was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these wild forms adorned it, as looking 80 at home in it."

The Indian encampment was constantly enlarged by new arrivals, which Margaret watched from the window of her boarding-house.

“I was never tired of seeing the canoes come in, and the new arrivals set up their temporary dwellings. The women ran to set up the tent-poles and spread the mats on the ground. The men brought the chests, kettles, and so on. The mats were then laid on the outside, the cedar boughs strewed on the ground, the blanket hung up for a door, and all was completed in less than twenty minutes. Then they began to prepare the night meal, and to learn of their neighbours the news of the day,"

In these days, in which a spasm of conscience touches the American heart with a sense of the wrongs