THE NORTHLAND INDIAN AS HE IS 91 



The Indian is the sybarite of the Northland, and the 

 only genuine socialist on earth. He holds all the posses- 

 sions of his country equally with his tribe, feasts and fasts 

 and sorrows and rejoices in common, and roams where his 

 legs carry and his gun provides. When there is abun- 

 dance he smokes his pipe in happy indolence, and his 

 wife does the work; when there is no meat for the kettle 

 he shoulders his gun and goes out into the woods, leaving 

 care and hunger at home with the squaw. But he does 

 not invariably escape hunger. It is ever a feast or a 

 famine with him, and it might always be a feast were he 

 not so improvident and lazy. Clothing and food are at 

 his very door. In the rivers and lakes there is fish in 

 great quantity and variety ; along their banks, fisher, 

 otter, mink, beaver, and muskrat ; and in the forests, 

 moose, caribou, bear, lynx, fox, wolf, wolverene, marten, 

 ermine, and rabbits to say nothing of the early spring 

 and autumn migrations of ducks and geese, the packs of 

 ptarmigan, which in their changing plumage of brown and 

 white are to be seen summer and winter, and the several 

 other species of the grouse family that may be found the 

 greater part of the year. There is no occasion for an 

 Indian to starve in this country, if he keeps out of the 

 Barren Grounds ; but hunting demands skill, of which he 

 has less than any other red man I ever knew, and a never- 

 failing cache presupposes foresight, of which he has none 

 so that, in truth, he fasts more often than he feasts. 



Snow-shoe running, packing, and canoeing are the three 

 most resourceful fields of the Indian story-teller ; and of 

 the three, running affords him greatest scope for his pe- 

 culiar imagination. 



The Indian of the Northland is neither an ingenious 

 nor a picturesque Munchausen. He is just a plain liar, 

 who seems not even to count on the credulity of his 



