OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
CHAPTER I. 
THE MESSAGE OF A MOCKING-BIRD. 
It was in the year 1877, before any of the children 
who read this book were born. We were living on 
one of the great reservations in the Indian Territory. 
Some one knocked at the door. When the door was 
opened, there stood a little Indian girl, her head all 
covered up in a bright shawl. She was shy, as Indian 
girls were before they had seen many white people. 
Very timidly she drew her hand from under her shawl 
and gave to us a baby mocking-bird. Then she turned 
and ran down the prairie toward her buffalo-skin lodge 
not far away. 
We understood. The little girl’s name was Kitty- 
ka-tat. She had been to our house often. She knew 
that we liked pets of all kinds, and birds most of all, so 
she had captured this one for us by a kind of snare or 
trap. Of course we kept it, for we did not know where 
its nest was. We allowed it to use the whole house 
fora cage. It ate wherever we ate, and slept at night 
on the curtain pole above the window. 
B 1 
