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.
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