He said that when he was very young, and had never yet seen a white man, he and three or four of his companions were out on a beaver hunt, and he crawled into a large beaver lodge, to examine what was there.Sometimes he was creeping on his hands and knees, sometimes he was obliged to swim, and sometimes to lie flat on his face and drag himself along.In this way he crawled a great distance underground.It was very dark, cold and close, so that at last he was almost suffocated, and fell into a swoon.When he began to recover, he could just distinguish the voices of his companions outside, who had given him up for lost, and were singing his death song.At first he could see nothing, but soon he discerned something white before him, and at length plainly distinguished three people, entirely white; one man and two women, sitting at the edge of a black pool of water.He became alarmed and thought it high time to retreat.Having succeeded, after great trouble, in reaching daylight again, he went straight to the spot directly above the pool of water where he had seen the three mysterious beings.Here he beat a hole with his war club in the ground, and sat down to watch.In a moment the nose of an old male beaver appeared at the opening.Mene-Seela instantly seized him and dragged him up, when two other beavers, both females, thrust out their heads, and these he served in the same way.
"These," continued the old man, "must have been the three white people whom I saw sitting at the edge of the water."Mene-Seela was the grand depository of the legends and traditions of the village.I succeeded, however, in getting from him only a few fragments.Like all Indians, he was excessively superstitious, and continually saw some reason for withholding his stories."It is a bad thing," he would say, "to tell the tales in summer.Stay with us till next winter, and I will tell you everything I know; but now our war parties are going out, and our young men will be killed if I sit down to tell stories before the frost begins."But to leave this digression.We remained encamped on this spot five days, during three of which the hunters were at work incessantly, and immense quantities of meat and hides were brought in.Great alarm, however, prevailed in the village.All were on the alert.The young men were ranging through the country as scouts, and the old men paid careful attention to omens and prodigies, and especially to their dreams.In order to convey to the enemy (who, if they were in the neighborhood, must inevitably have known of our presence) the impression that we were constantly on the watch, piles of sticks and stones were erected on all the surrounding hills, in such a manner as to appear at a distance like sentinels.Often, even to this hour, that scene will rise before my mind like a visible reality: the tall white rocks; the old pine trees on their summits; the sandy stream that ran along their bases and half encircled the village; and the wild-sage bushes, with their dull green hue and their medicinal odor, that covered all the neighboring declivities.Hour after hour the squaws would pass and repass with their vessels of water between the stream and the lodges.For the most part no one was to be seen in the camp but women and children, two or three super-annuated old men, and a few lazy and worthless young ones.These, together with the dogs, now grown fat and good-natured with the abundance in the camp, were its only tenants.Still it presented a busy and bustling scene.
In all quarters the meat, hung on cords of hide, was drying in the sun, and around the lodges the squaws, young and old, were laboring on the fresh hides that were stretched upon the ground, scraping the hair from one side and the still adhering flesh from the other, and rubbing into them the brains of the buffalo, in order to render them soft and pliant.
In mercy to myself and my horse, I never went out with the hunters after the first day.Of late, however, I had been gaining strength rapidly, as was always the case upon every respite of my disorder.Iwas soon able to walk with ease.Raymond and I would go out upon the neighboring prairies to shoot antelope, or sometimes to assail straggling buffalo, on foot, an attempt in which we met with rather indifferent success.To kill a bull with a rifle-ball is a difficult art, in the secret of which I was as yet very imperfectly initiated.
As I came out of Kongra-Tonga's lodge one morning, Reynal called to me from the opposite side of the village, and asked me over to breakfast.The breakfast was a substantial one.It consisted of the rich, juicy hump-ribs of a fat cow; a repast absolutely unrivaled.
It was roasting before the fire, impaled upon a stout stick, which Reynal took up and planted in the ground before his lodge; when he, with Raymond and myself, taking our seats around it, unsheathed our knives and assailed it with good will.It spite of all medical experience, this solid fare, without bread or salt, seemed to agree with me admirably.
"We shall have strangers here before night," said Reynal.
"How do you know that?" I asked.
