Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/172

152 savage, after a chance to learn his ways, could far more easily appropriate the keen and sagacious qualities of the Indian than the Indian could avail himself of the cultivated and expanded faculties and ingenuities of the paleface. The European would not at first trust himself in the woods without a compass. The Indian despised the contemptible little index. But the white man was not long in acquiring the Indian's craft in all forest weather-signs and trail-marks. General Braddock allowed whole ranks and files of orderly marching English soldiers to be picked off one by one by ambushed Indians, skulking in the bushes of a ravine. But the white man soon learned how to do this bush-fighting behind tree or stump; and as the Indian, seeing the flash of the rifle, if not struck by the ball, would instantly rush upon his victim before he could reload, the white man would have a substitute by his side, or two guns.

Doubtless there has been some exaggeration in the picturesque and fanciful relations of the almost preternatural skill and cunning of the Indian, when with all his faculties alive and strained, in caution or suspicion, he exhibits a craft in the woods, on the trail, or in circumventing his enemies, beyond anything of the same kind which the white man can attain by ingenuity and practice. In the woods, amid decaying leaves, on the moss or the grass, or on the lichen of the rocks, the Indian will detect the marks of any feet that have passed over it. He will divine whether the marks are recent, or the number of days which have elapsed since they were pressed, the number of the company, and the direction and sometimes the object of their course. True, the same skill in detection is offset by the same ingenuity in concealment or deception. Sometimes the moccasons or shoes of one or more skulking persons will be reversed on the feet as if to mislead the pursuer in his search. Sometimes a single person will multiply his own foot-prints, or a portion of a party will carry others on