Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/166

146 was not prompted in either case. The crowded wigwam did not admit of diffidence, modesty, or concealment in exercising the functions of nature. Anything like fastidiousness, delicacy, or squeamishness, was not only foreign to the savage, but was utterly inconceivable and inexplicable to him when exhibited by the white man. The Jesuit Fathers domiciled with the savages, with that exquisite tact and self-control by which they uniformly sought to conciliate and attach to them the subjects of their patient toils, very soon learned to conceal all their antipathies and qualms amid the untidiness, the filth, and the indecencies of an Indian wigwam. Suffocated with the vile odors of their surroundings, the vapors of the kettle, and the close-packed humanity; tormented by vermin, their eyes scorched and blinded by the smoke, with children and dogs crawling over them by night, — these gentlemen and scholars from France adapted themselves to the situation; to them certainly an unnatural one, though to the natives it presented no annoyance, no discomfort. Occasionally, for a long fixed residence at a mission, the priest would set up a separate cabin for himself. But this was rather that he might have a place of retirement for study and devotion, than to exhibit his distaste for the domestic life of his disciples. For him there was really no escaping from conformity to Indian manners as regards food and its preparation. He was limited to their larders, as he carried with him into the wilderness none of the luxuries of civilization; content only to transport the materials and symbols of the mass, with paper for his reports to his superiors.

The first implements which the savages were most eager to obtain from the whites were hatchets and metal kettles. The latter were at once used as substitutes for the vessels of unglazed pottery, or closely woven wicker, or hollowed wooden receptacles, which had previously been in use. Though much of the food of the natives was