Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/209

Rh them or to strike a panic among them, or whether to surround them and drive them into a circle, or to some pit or precipice or snare. They did not pause a moment, where the animals were tempting in number, to secure any one of them which a hunter had struck down or severely crippled. Each hunter knew his own arrow, or, if armed with a gun, the direction of his bullet; and when the wild scrimmage was over there was no dispute or rivalry, as each selected his own spoils. Care was had, if possible, to gather enough for a gluttonous feast on their return to their lodges, and for the season's store. With the scrupulous economy before referred to, so long as the natives had not learned wastefulness from the whites, they put every fragment of the animal to some good use. More than in any other demand upon their strength or dignity, the male savages were ready, on the occasion of a return from the hunt, to share the burden of the squaws. Sometimes, if the game had led them to a considerable distance from their lodges, it was necessary to cache, or bury in concealment, all that they were unable to convey, returning for it at their leisure. It was only at a special season of the year that different species of game were in good flesh, and that the fleeces of the animals were in proper condition for preserving the hides or skins. The ranges of the different species of game — the buffalo, the moose, the caribou, the mountain sheep, the elk, the otter — were sometimes limited. The bear, the deer, the beaver, and several smaller creatures were widely distributed. The more dependent any tribe was upon hunting, rather than upon other food, the more wild were its habits and the more robust its physique.

But life among these men of the woods and streams had its dark side, — dismal and appalling in its dreads and sufferings. Not to these untutored men, women, and children, more than to the civilized, was existence relieved from real or from imaginary and artificial woes. The