IN QUEST OF TREASURE 47 



similar to that of the female woodpecker: unusually long, and 

 much too pointed to be of any use." 



THE HONESTY OF INDIANS 



But to return to the Indian's reproach of the white man's 

 dishonesty; when he states that the spirits of white children 

 enter only those birds that are counted great thieves, one can- 

 not wonder at it, for as far as honesty is concerned, a comparison 

 between the forest Indian and the white man brands the latter 

 as a thief. Not only is that the private opinion of all the old 

 fur traders I have met, but I could quote many other authorities; 

 let two, however, suffice: Charles Mair, the author of "Te- 

 cumseh," and a member of the Indian Treaty Expedition of 

 1899, says: 



"The writer, and doubtless some of his readers, can recall the 

 time when to go to ' Peace River ' seemed almost hke going to 

 another sphere, where, it was conjectured, life was lived very 

 differently from that of civilized man. And, truly, it was to 

 enter into an unfamiliar state of things; a region in which a 

 primitive people, not without fault or depravities, lived on 

 Nature's food, and throve on her unfailing harvest of fur. A 

 region in which they often left their beaver, silver fox, or marten 

 packs — the envy of Fashion — lying by the dog-trail, or hang- 

 ing to some sheltering tree, because no one stole, and took 

 their fellow's word without question, because no one lied. A 

 very simple folk indeed, in whose language profanity was un- 

 known, and who had no desire to leave their congenital soH- 

 tudes for any other spot on earth : sohtudes which so charmed 

 the educated minds who brought the white man's rehgion, or 

 traffic, to their doors, that, like the Lotus-eaters, they, too, felt 

 httle craving to depart. Yet they were not regions of sloth or 

 idleness, but of necessary toil; of the laborious chase and the 

 endless activities of aboriginal life: the regions of a people 



