LIFE AND LOVE RETURN 281 



pleted, packing began in readiness for the postward journey; 

 there, as usual, they would spend their well-earned holidays 

 with pleasure upon their tribal summer camping grounds. 



So, when all was in readiness, the deerskin lodge coverings 

 were taken down, rolled up, and stored out of harm's way upon 

 a stage. Then, with hearts hght with happiness and canoes 

 heavy with the wealth of the forest, we paddled away with 

 pleasant memories of oiur forest home, and looked forward to 

 our arrival at Fort Consolation. 



Soon after entering Rear River the canoes were turned 

 toward the western bank and halted at a point near one of their 

 old camping grounds. Then Naudin — Amik's wife — left the 

 others, and took her way among the trees to an opening in the 

 wood. There stood two little wooden crosses that marked the 

 graves of two of her children — one a still-born girl and the 

 other a boy who had died at the age of three. Upon the boy's 

 grave she placed some food and a little bow and some arrows, 

 and bowed low over it and wept aloud. Rut at the grave of her 

 still-born child she forgot her grief and smiled with joy as she 

 placed upon the mound a handful of fresh flowers, a few pretty 

 feathers, and some handsome furs. Sitting there in the warm 

 sunshine, she closed her eyes — as she told me afterward — 

 and fancied she heard the httle maid dancing among the 

 rusthng leaves and singing to her. 



Like all Indian women of the Strong Woods, she beheved 

 that her still-born child would never grow larger or older; that 

 it would never leave her; that it would always love her, though 

 she lived to be a great-grandmother; that when sorrow and pain 

 bowed her low this httle maid would laugh and dance and talk 

 and sing to her, and thus change her grief into joy. That is 

 why an Indian mother puts pretty things upon the grave of her 

 still-born child, and that is why she never mourns over it. 



As our journey progressed those enemies of comfort and 

 pleasure, the black flies, appeared, and at sunrise and sunset 



