Read Ebook: Stories of American Life and Adventure by Eggleston Edward

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Powhatan saved Spelman from being killed by the Indians; but, now that the Indians were at war with the white men, who were shut up in Jamestown without food, they wished to kill all the white people in the country.

Spelman and a Dutchman, who also lived with Powhatan, began to be afraid that he would not protect them any longer. So, when a chief of the Potomac Indians visited Powhatan, and asked the Dutchman and the boy to go to his country, they left Powhatan and went back with them. Powhatan sent messengers after them, who killed the Dutchman. Henry Spelman ran away into the woods. Powhatan's men followed him, but the Potomacs got hold of Powhatan's men, and held them back until Spelman could get away. The boy managed at last to get to the country of the Potomac Indians.

It was very lucky for Spelman that he was among the Indians at this time. Nearly all the white people in Jamestown were killed, or died of hunger. Spelman lived among the Indians for years. During this time more people came from England, and settled at Jamestown. A ship from Jamestown came up into the Potomac River to trade. The captain of the ship bought Spelman from the Indians. He was now a young man, and, as he could speak both the Indian language and the English, he was very useful in carrying on trade between the white men and the Indians.

At the time that Henry Spelman first went among the Indians, they had no iron tools except a very few that they had bought of the white people. They had no guns, nor knives, nor hatchets. They had no hoes nor axes. They made their tools out of hard wood, shells, stones, deer horns, and other such things. They had not yet bought blankets from the white men, but made their clothes mostly out of the skins of animals.

The Indians could not learn much about the white man's arts from Spelman, because he did not know much. Besides, he had no iron of which to make tools. He learned to make arrows of cane such as we use for fishing rods. He also learned to point his arrows with the spur of a wild turkey, or a piece of stone. These arrow points he stuck into the arrow with a kind of glue. But he first had to learn how to make his glue out of deers' horns. Before he could make any of the tools, he had to make himself a knife, as the Indians did. Having no iron, the blade of his knife was made out of a beaver's tooth, which is very sharp, and will cut wood. He set this tooth in the end of a stick. You see how hard it was for an Indian to get tools. He had to learn to make one tool in order to use that in making another tool.

One of the principal things that an Indian had to do was to make a canoe; for, as the Indians had no horses, they could travel only by water, unless they went afoot. Canoes were the only boats they had. They had to make canoes without any of the tools that white men use. Let us explain this by a story about Henry and an Indian boy. The things in the story may not have happened just as they are told, but the account of how things are made by the Indians is all true.

THE MAKING OF A CANOE.

Henry had a young Indian friend whose name was Keketaw. One day Keketaw said to him, "Let us go into the woods and make a canoe."

"If we had an ax to cut down the trees," said the white boy, "or an adz, such as they have at Jamestown, or if we could get a hatchet, we might make a canoe; but we have not even a little knife."

"We will make a canoe in the Indian way," said Keketaw. "I will show you how. Let us get ready."

"What shall we do to get ready?" asked Henry.

"We must take our bows, and we must make many arrows, so as to get something to eat, and we must have fishing lines," said Keketaw, "or we shall not be able to live in the woods."

For some days the two boys were getting ready. It took them a long time to scrape a piece of bone into a fishhook by means of a beaver's tooth set in a stick, but they made three of these hooks. They made some more hooks not so good as these by tying a splinter of bone to a little stick. Keketaw's mother made fishing lines for them. She took the long leaves of the plant which we call Spanish bayonet, and separated these threads into a hard cord, rubbing them between her hand and her knee.

"We must have swords," said Keketaw.

"We can cut our meat with this," said Henry, pointing to a knife made of cane, such as the Indians called a pamesack.

"But the Monacans may come," said Keketaw. "If we should see one sticking up his head, I should want a sword to fight him with; and if we should kill him, we could cut off his scalp with it;" and Keketaw's eyes glistened a little at the thought of fetching home a Monacan's scalp.

The Monacans were fierce Indians of a tribe living in the country west of the Powhatan Indians. They were deadly enemies of Keketaw's tribe.

The two boys, by much slow work with stones and shells and beaver-tooth chisels, managed to scrape a wooden sword into shape. This, Henry was to wear at his back. Keketaw, for his part, found a piece of deer's horn. He stuck it into a stick so that it made something like a small pickax. With this he said he could quickly break the head of a Monacan. It would also serve as a sort of hatchet.

The land round the village in which Keketaw lived had been cleared of trees. This had been done by burning the trees in order to make room for fields. In these fields the Indians planted corn, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco, and a plant something like a sunflower, which is called an artichoke. Of the root of this artichoke they made a kind of bread.

For many miles there were no good canoe trees near the water. They had all been picked out and used. Henry and Keketaw traveled twenty miles into a deep woods, and chose a tree that would make a good canoe, and that stood near a stream which ran into the James River.

The first thing they did was to break down young trees and boughs, and build themselves a brush tent. They made a bed out of dry leaves. The first night they had nothing to eat, for they had no time to shoot any game. The next morning they were too hungry to sleep late, and they knew that squirrels are early risers. Soon after daylight the Indian boy killed a squirrel with an arrow. Having no fire, they ate it without cooking; for, when one is a savage, one must not be too nice.

How should they get a fire? They first took a piece of dry wood, which they scraped flat with stones. Then, with a blow of his tomahawk of deer's horn, Keketaw made a round hole in the wood. One end of a dry stick was placed in this hole. The other end was supported in the hollow of a shell which Keketaw held in his hand.

The string to Henry's bow was made of one of the cords or sinews of a deer's leg. He wound this once round the stick. With his left hand, Keketaw then put some dry moss about the stick where it entered the hole in the dry wood.

When all was ready, Henry drew his bow to and fro like a saw. Keketaw pressed the shell down on the upper part of the stick. The bow-string holding the stick made it whirl in the hole beneath. At first this seemed to produce no effect. After a while the rapid rubbing of the piece of wood in the hole made heat. Presently a very thin thread of smoke began to come up through the little heap of moss about the stick. Henry was now pretty well out of breath, but he sawed the bow faster than ever. At last the moss began to smolder and to show fire.

Keketaw then withdrew the smoking stick, and gathered the moss together. Lying down by it, and putting his arm about it, the Indian lad began to blow it gently. The smoldering fire increased until a little blue flame, which he could barely see, appeared. Keketaw now added some very thin paper-like bits of dry bark and some small twigs to the pile of smoking moss. These caught fire, and sent up a straw-colored flame. Henry put on larger twigs until there was at last a crackling blaze.

Taking lighted sticks from this fire, the boys made a fire all round the base of a large tree from which they meant to get the canoe. This fire they kept going constantly for two days. They even got up at night to put dead boughs on, it.

On the third night of their stay in camp, they didn't lie down at the usual time, for the tree was burned nearly through. About two o'clock in the morning a little breeze rustled in the leaves of the great tree. Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly, the tree fell with a tremendous crashing sound, until with a final thundering roar it lay flat upon the ground.

Sleepy as the boys were, they did not lie down for the night until they had built a new fire near the trunk of the tree. Having no ax to chop with, they had to burn the log in two. They put the fire at a place that would cut off enough of the tree trunk to make a canoe.

The next day they built up this new fire, and then went fishing in the neighboring stream with their bone fishhooks, and lines made of the Spanish bayonet leaf. In two days after the fall of the tree they had burned off the log that was to make their canoe, and had scraped off all the bark with shells.

They then lighted little fires on top of the log, and, when these had charred the wood for an inch or more in depth in any place, they removed the fire and scraped away the charcoal. Then they built another little fire in the same place. These little fires were made with gum taken from the pine trees.

The only tools they had for scraping were shells from the river, and sharp stones. Keketaw sometimes used his deer-horn tomahawk for the same purpose. It was fourteen days from the time they first lighted the fire at the foot of the tree until their canoe was finished. Two more days were spent in making paddles. This work was also done by burning and scraping.

When all was done, the canoe was slid down the soft bank into the water. It floated right side up to the delight of its makers. The boys now thought it would be a fine stroke to take a deer home with them. So they pulled one end of their canoe up on the shore, and started out to look for one.

But the first tracks they found were not deer tracks. They were the footprints of men. Keketaw made a sign to Henry by turning the palm of his hand toward the earth, and then moving the hand downward. This meant to keep low, and make no noise. Then Keketaw climbed a high pine tree. From the top of the tree he could see a number of Indians at a spring of water.

The boy slid down the tree in haste. "Monacans on the war path!" he whispered as he reached the ground.

Swiftly and silently the two boys hurried back to their canoe. They wasted no time in admiring it. They gathered their weapons and fishing lines, and got aboard. It was not a question of killing Monacans now, but of saving themselves and their friends. They rowed with all their might from the start.

For hours they kept their new paddles busy. They reached the village after dark, and when they uttered the dreadful word "Monacans," it ran from one wigwam to another. The women and children shuddered with fear. The warriors smeared their faces with paint, to make themselves uglier than ever, and departed. Soon after the boys had started home, the Monacans had found their camp fire still burning. Thinking they had been discovered, and knowing that a strong party of the Powhatan Indians might come after them, the Monacans had hurried back to their own home more swiftly than they had come.

SOME THINGS ABOUT INDIAN CORN.

When the white people first came to America, they had never seen Indian corn, which did not grow in Europe. The Indians raised it in little patches about their villages. Before planting their corn, they had to clear away the trees that covered the whole country. Their axes were made of stone, and were not sharp enough to cut down a tree. The larger trees they cut down by burning them off at the bottom. They killed the smaller trees by building little fires about them. When the bark all round a tree was burned, the tree died. As dead trees bear no leaves, the sun could shine through their branches on the ground where corn was to be planted.

Having no iron, they had to make their tools as they could. In some places they made a hoe by tying the shoulder blade of a deer to a stick. In other places they used half of the shell of a turtle for a hoe or spade to dig up the ground. This could be done where the ground was soft. In North Carolina the Indians had a little thing like a pickax which was made out of a deer's horn tied to a stick. An Indian woman would sit down on the ground with one of these little pickaxes in her hand. She would dig up the earth for a little space until it was loose. Then she would make a little hole in the soft earth. In this she would plant four or five grains of corn, putting them about an inch apart. Then she covered these grains with soft earth. In Virginia, where the ground was soft and sandy, the Indians made a kind of spade out of wood.

Sometimes they planted a patch a long way off from their bark house, so that they would not be tempted to eat it while it was green. The Indians were very fond of green corn. They roasted the ears in the ashes. Some of the tribes held a great feast when the first green corn was fit to eat, and some of them worshiped a spirit that they called the "Spirit of the Corn."

When the corn was dry, the Indians pounded it in order to make meal or hominy of it. Sometimes they parched the corn, and then pounded it into meal. They carried this parched meal with them when they went hunting and when they went to war. They could eat it with a little water, without stopping to cook it. They called it Nokick, but the white people called it No-cake.

When the Pilgrims came to Cape Cod, they sent out Miles Standish and some other men to look through the country and find a good place for them to settle. Standish tried to find some of the Indians in order to make friends with them, but the Indians ran away whenever they saw him coming. One day he found a heap of sand. He knew it had been lately piled up, because he could see the marks of hands on the sand where the Indians had patted it down. Standish and his men dug up this heap. They soon came to a little old basket full of Indian corn. When they had dug further, they found a very large new basket full of fine corn which had been lately gathered.

The white men, who had never seen it before, thought Indian corn very beautiful. Some of the ears were yellow, some were red. On other ears blue and yellow grains were mixed. Standish and his men said it was a "very goodly sight." The Indian basket was round and narrow at the top. It held three or four bushels of corn, and it was as much as two men could do to lift it from the ground. The white men wondered to see how handsomely it was woven.

Near the pile of corn they found an old kettle which the Indians had probably bought from some ship. They filled this kettle with corn, They also filled their baskets with it. They wanted the corn for seed. They made up their mind to pay the Indians whenever they could find them. The next summer they found out who were the owners of this buried corn, and paid them for all the corn they had taken. If they had not found this corn, they would not have had any to plant the next spring, and so they would have starved to death.

The people that were with Miles Standish settled at Plymouth. They were the first that came to live in New England. An Indian named Squanto came to live with the white people at Plymouth. Squanto was born at this very place. He had been carried away to England by a sea captain. Then he had been brought back by another captain to his own country. When he got back to Plymouth, he found that all the people of his village had died from a great sickness. He went to live with another tribe near by. When the white people came to Plymouth, they settled on the ground where Squanto's people had lived. As he could speak some English, and as all his own tribe were dead, he now came to live with the white people.

The white people learned also to cook their corn as the Indians did. They learned to eat hominy and samp, and these we still call by their Indian names. "Succotash" is another Indian word. The white people learned from the Indians to use the husks of Indian corn to make things. The Indians made ropes of corn husks, and in some places they made shoes of plaited husks. The white people in early times made their door mats and horse collars and beds of corn husks. They also twisted and wove husks to make seats for their chairs.

Of all the plants that grew in America, Indian corn was the most important to the Indians. It was also of the most value to the first white people who came to this country.

SOME WOMEN IN THE INDIAN WARS.

When white people first came to this country, they had much trouble with the Indians. After a while, when they had learned to defend themselves and got used to danger, they did not mind it much. Even the women became as brave as soldiers.

In very early times there were some families of people from Sweden living not far from where Philadelphia now stands. One day the women were all together boiling soap. It was the custom then to make soap at home. Water was first poured through ashes to make lye. People put this lye into a large kettle, and then threw into it waste pieces of meat and bits of fat of all kinds. After boiling a long time, this mixture made a kind of soft soap, which was the only soap the early settlers had. The large kettle in which the soap was boiled was hung on a pole. This pole was held up by two forked sticks driven into the ground. A fire was kept burning under the kettle. Of course, this soap boiling took place out of doors.

Some Indians, creeping through the woods, saw the women together without any men. They thought it a good chance to kill them or make them prisoners; but the women caught sight of the Indians, and ran away to their little church. The churches in that day were often built so they could be used for forts. The church to which these women ran was one of this kind. But the women had no guns with them. They knew that when they got into the church they would have nothing to fight with. So two of them took hold of the ends of the pole on which the kettle of boiling soap was hanging, and carried the kettle into the little church with them.

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