Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/193

Rh winter — buried in mountain heaps of snow, whirled by the wild blasts, and scant or wholly destitute even of the least nutritive food — life in the wigwam for a solitary person or a family combined all the miseries of a dismal and dreary existence. The Indian's self-mastery and philosophy bore him through these dark extremes of his experience. The bear was hibernating; the deer had sought the thickest woods; the beaver's lodge was fast bound in ice; and even the fish in the streams were not longer to be reached by the gleam of torches or tempted by an air-hole through the thick covering of hard and soft snow. There was not a bird in the air. The weary season wore away: and when the spring came — as it does in those northern realms — with a rushing cheer and vigor, the spell was broken; for Nature provided bountifully for her children when she was released from her own bondage.

The prevailing view and representation of the habits of the aborigines is that they were wasteful and improvident as to provision for their own most common needs of sustenance; and that in consequence there was a period in every year, in the extremities of winter, when they were hopelessly annoyed by the pangs of hunger, — often to the extremities of starvation. And this was said to be the case, not from the absolute conditions and necessities and exigencies of their way of life, but from sheer indolence, recklessness, and an utter incompetency in forethought and prudence. There may be a general accordance with fact and observation in this view, but it needs qualification; very large and very significant exceptions are found to it in many cases. Of course the Indian's habits as to thrift and providence in providing for his needs put him most strongly in contrast with those of the first white settlers on his lands. The wise and laborious Northern colonists, in foresight of a stern winter, built their log-cabins strong and tight, with chimneys to carry off the smoke. They provided cellars banked against the