MN BEARD 

 AIM MS 



SONS OF DANIEL BOONE. 



We are rather apt to flatter ourselves that 

 we civilized people are very much more 

 clever than Indians, bushmen and other sav- 

 ages. But the more we look into the matter 

 the more likely we are to discover that the 

 real, wild men are quite smart fellows in 

 their own way. If any of the Sons of Dan- 

 iel Boone should be fortunate enough to take 

 a long canoe trip with real Indians, he will, 

 no doubt, find that, though the Indian is a 

 very humble and submissive personage just 

 as long as he is in the white man's country, 



death ; and travelers tell us that these traits 

 are not confined to North American Indians, 

 but are found highly developed wherever 

 the wild man exists. 



It has been claimed that there are three 

 inventions that may not be improved upon : 

 the birch-bark canoe, the snowshoe and the 

 violin; and of these three, two owe their 

 birth to the ingenuity of the Indian brain. 



We should be inclined to add a fourth in- 

 vention to this list of non-perfectable inven- 

 tions. 



Supposing that you, instead of being a Son 



a few hours after plunging into the wilder- 

 ness he seems somehow to have changed his 

 relationship towards his employer. In the 

 settlement the white man was the "big boss" 

 and Mr. Indian kept very much in the back- 

 ground. But ere the first camp shall have 

 been made, the Indian seems to have grown 

 vastly in importance arid his white friends 

 have begun to realize — and the more experi- 

 enced they are the more likely they are to 

 thoroughly realize this — that they have 

 found their master. The Indian can shoot a 

 rapid, carry a load, make camp, in fact do 

 any "stunt" in woodcraft, in a way that 

 makes emulation on the part of the white 

 man absolutely hopeless. 



He will find food to support life where a 

 civilized man would inevitably starve to 



of Daniel Boone, and living under the Amer- 

 ican flag in the twentieth century, had been 

 born beneath the Southern Cross, on the 

 great island continent of Australia, a couple 

 of hundred years ago, and had been con- 

 fronted with the following problem : 



All around you were to be seen great 

 n^_ds of kangaroo and wallaby. The lagoons 

 fringing the great Murray river were swarm- 

 ing with black-headed swans and that queer, 

 half-animal, half-birdlike creature, known as 

 the duck-billed platypus. You had no butch- 

 er store to call upon for meat, no baker to 

 go to for bread, no grocer for canned goods 

 of any kind ; but you had the fine, keen ap- 

 petite of a wild man, and a very strong de- 

 sire to secure some of these animals and 

 birds for the pot. Yet, iron you had none, 



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