I. MOTHER EARTH 
“Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers 
owned this great land. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting 
sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of the Indians. He had 
created the buffalo and the deer and other animals for food. He had made 
the bear and the be1ver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had 
scattered them over the country and had taught us how to take them. He 
had c1used the earth to produce corn for bread. All this he had done for 
his red children because he loved them.” 
—F-om the great oration of ‘Red Jacket,” the Seneca Indian, on The Religion of 
the White Man and the Red. 
If you ever read the letters of the pioneers who first settled 
in your locality when it was all a wilderness (and how recent 
was thetime!), you will find them filled with discussion of the 
possibilities of getting a living and establishing a home there. 
Were there springs of good water there? Was there native 
pasturage for the animals? Was there fruit? Was there 
fish? Was there game? Was there timber of good quality 
for building? Was the soil fertile? Was the climate health- 
ful? Was the outlook good? Has it ever occurred to you 
how, in absence of real-estate and immigration agencies, they 
found out about all these things? 
They sought this information at its source. They followed 
up the streams. They foraged: they fished: they hunted. 
They measured the boles of the trees with eyes experienced in 
woodcraft. They judged of what nature would do with their 
sowings by what they saw her doing with her own native 
crops. And having found a sheltered place with a pleasant 
outlook and with springs and grass and forage near at hand, 
they built a dwelling and planted a garden. Thus, a new era 
of agriculture was ushered in. 
Your ancestors were white men who came from another 
continent and brought with them tools and products and 
-traditions of another civilization. Their tools, though 
simple, were efficient. Their axes and spades and needles 
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