34 The Book of Woodcraft 



tims, under dire stress of hunger or travel, and was dis- 

 approved and denounced by all their great teachers. 



During my Northern journey in 1907 I selected for one 

 of my guides a fine young Indian named Freesay. At the 

 end of our first journey I said to him: "Would you like to 

 go with me still farther, to the Far North country, and see 

 the things your people have not yet seen? I will give you 

 good wages and a big present. " 



He replied: "Yes; I would like to go very much, but my 

 uncle [his adoptive father] told me not to go beyond Pike's 

 Lobstick, and so I cannot go. " And he did not, though his 

 uncle was 350 miles away. This was one case out of 

 several noted, and many heard of. The Fifth Command- 

 ment is a very big, strong law in the wigwam. 



KINDNESS 



At every first meeting of red men and whites, the whites 

 were inferior in numbers, and yet were received with the 

 utmost kindness, until they treacherously betrayed the men 

 who had helped and harbored them. Even Christopher 

 Columbus, blind and burnt up with avarice as he was, 

 and soul-poisoned with superstition, and contempt for an 

 alien race, yet had the fairness to write home to his royal 

 accomplices in crime, the King and Queen of Spain: 



"I swear to your Majesties that there is not a better people 

 in the world than these; more affectionate, affable or mild. 

 They love their neighbors as themselves, and they always speak 

 smilingly. (Catlin, "N. A. Indian," II., p. 246.) 



Jonathan Carver, who lived among the Sioux from 

 1766-9, after speaking of their severity in dealing with 

 enemies, says: 



