Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/208

188 of amusement, relaxation, or observance. Cruelty in some form was apt to intrude itself even upon the amusements of the savages. Where this was excluded, the whites who have been observers of these spectacles — even of some which are jealously reserved from the eyes of strangers — have reported them as often pleasing for their vivacity, from the evidently keen enjoyment of them, and for their grateful relief from the monotony of a grovelling life. Occasionally a gifted genius among the savages, filled with the traditions and skilfully turning to account the superstitions of his tribe, with all the spirit and imagination, though lacking the metric and rhythmic art, of the poet, would engage for hours the rapt attention of his hushed auditors, as in his generation he was made the repository, for transmission, of their legendary lore.

The preparations for the hunt and the return from it when it had been successful — with exception only of the going and the return of war-parties — were the most noisy and demonstrative occasions of Indian life. The skilled watching of the signs of the seasons, with their keen observance of the periodicity which rules in all the phenomena of Nature, and the reports of their scouts sent only in one or two directions, gave them due notice of the day when the beasts or the fowl — “who know their appointed times” — were ready to be turned to the uses of their more privileged kindred the red men. Their weapons and foot-gear were ready. The squaws were to accompany them to flay the victims and to secure the meat. The night or the day before the start, some simple observances were held to secure propitious omens. The older braves consulted the secrets of their “medicine-bags,” and the youths who were to make their first trial of early manhood were like dogs in the leash. The hunters knew where to go, how to creep in noiseless secrecy, and when to raise the shout. They had agreed whether they were to rush in free coursing upon their game, either to outrun