Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/180

160 their superior. The beaver worked much harder than the Indian, for he had to build a dam as well as a lodge, and to gnaw down trees, and carry mud for mortar; and the beaver's lodge was cleanlier than the red man's, and well stocked for winter's food. The Indian was content to live on food similar to the animal's, and to get it in a similar way, — by strength or guile. He was content to learn his best practical wisdom from animals, and then to outwit them from their free teaching by exercising a keener faculty of his own. His knowledge of their habits and instincts, gathered from patient, watchful study and keen observation, surpassed that which we can get from the most accurate and interesting books on natural history. And when the Indian had made himself an adept in all the shifts and devices and all the sly and subtle artifices of animals, in self-protection, or to hide their holes or to cover their tracks, he had only to exercise a little more cunning in his trick to circumvent them. He was housed and fed and clothed precisely as were these animals; and, like them, he was often gorged by food or pinched by starvation.

And while the Indian knew his own way by forest, lake, and river, he was careful to mark it, for reference for others, by naming every feature and object of it. He had a name for every region and for each part of it; for every rill and spring, every summit, swamp, meadow, waterfall, bay, and promontory. The most intelligent explorers among us have often remarked upon the exquisite taste and fitness of the names which the Indians attached to every spot and scene of the country, — as Athabasca, “the Meeting-place of Many Waters;” Minnehaha, “Laughing Waters;” Minnesota, “Sky-tinted Water.”

Often has the regret been strongly expressed over all parts of our country that there has not been more of effort, pains, and consent to preserve more extensively the aboriginal names of localities, of rivers, lakes, mountains,