Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/177

Rh ways and workings of Nature, which gave them all their tuition and training. They kept themselves close to it, and regarded themselves as simply a part of it. They could describe to a stranger merely by signs, without language, the face and features of a region; its growths and its game; its hills and valleys; its rivers, swamps, lakes, and mountains; its water-ways and its portages. Adapting themselves to the slow wits of the white man, who needed illustrative help for guidance, they would take a piece of bark, and with a tracing of charcoal or bears' grease they would indicate his way with more exactness than our school-children get from their maps and geographies. A more or less rapid motion of the fingers or feet would signify easy or fast travel by day; and the head inclined on the hand, with closed eyes, would describe the rest of the night: thus denoting the number of days for a journey.

The Indian, too, had variety in his life. He anticipated many of our people in having two residences in the course of the year, without paying taxes in either of them. He made, once a year at least, a long tramp, for change of scene and food. If far inland, he sought the border of a great lake, or climbed a mountain. If he could reach it, he sought the roaring seashore, and had his tent on the beach. There is some conflict of testimony as to whether the abstinence from salt was universally, as we know it was largely, prevalent among our aborigines. The Indians at the West observed that the deer in the spring season gathered to any salt-licks that might be near their ranges, and seemed greatly to enjoy the alterative waters. Seeing the white or gray crystals of the condiment which, as the result of evaporation, lay round the shores of lakes or springs, they could hardly have refrained from tasting them. They seem never to have resorted to the artificial processes of evaporation. It would appear from the general testimony that the Indians did not use salt with their ordinary diet, nor employ it as a pickle, though when it was