"A hunting-song?"
"No fit for white man," - with an air of contempt. "No good, no
good!"
"Do, John, sing us a love-song," said I, laughing, "if you have such
a thing in your language."
"Oh! much love-song - very much - bad - bad - no good for Christian man.
Indian song no good for white ears." This was very tantalising, as
their songs sounded very sweetly from the lips of their squaws, and
I had a great desire and curiosity to get some of them rendered into
English.
To my husband they gave the name of "the musician," but I have
forgotten the Indian word. It signified the maker of sweet sounds.
They listened with intense delight to the notes of his flute,
maintaining a breathless silence during the performance; their dark
eyes flashing into fierce light at a martial strain, or softening
with the plaintive and tender.
The cunning which they display in their contests with their enemies,
in their hunting, and in making bargains with the whites (who are
too apt to impose on their ignorance), seems to spring more from a
law of necessity, forced upon them by their isolated position and
precarious mode of life, than from any innate wish to betray. The
Indian's face, after all, is a perfect index of his mind. The eye
chances its expression with every impulse and passion, and shows
what is passing within as clearly as the lightning in a dark night
betrays the course of the stream.
