Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/164

144 to feed some forest musings, some sylvan imaginings, and to furnish him the material of dreams and omens which entered into the traditions of his tribe and traced or clouded its history. A large part of the life of a savage was in solitariness, and except when he knew himself to be exposed to risks from lurking foes he was never lonely, timid, or suspicious. He relied on his own resources of strength, patience, and security. He could find a sufficient couch on the mossy grass, on a heap of green boughs, or in a burrow under the snow. If he did not acquire the instinct of a beast for scenting water at a distance, he was a skilled observer of all the signs which would aid him to find it. The inclination of the tops of the trees, showing the direction of the prevailing winds, and the thickening of the bark on the north side of them served him for a compass even in the depths of the forest and under a clouded and starless sky. No length of distance or obstacles in a day's tramping oppressed him with a fatigue that did not yield to a night's repose. However dampened and soaked with protracted rains or with wintry snow might be the trees and foliage of his route, he could always gather some fungi, or dry or decayed wood, for lighting a fire. He would mentally divide the spaces of a journey of hundreds of miles into equal parts without the help of any sign-post, and would reach his destination or return to his starting-point, as he had purposed to do, at the rise or the set of the sun. In all this he conformed and adapted himself to the ways and the methods of Nature. The trails through the deep forest were common to him and the beast. The deer and the buffalo made his turnpikes.

The Indians took for granted that the earth on which they were born was bound to afford them full sustenance, as it did to the animals, without any labor of their own; except such effort as they spent, like white men, in pastime, hunting or fishing. Every exertion that had the look of exacting toil was to them unwelcome, menial, and