wigwams like women. Now, he thought that a wigwam or bark
lodge was a very pleasant place. The small, dark, oven-shaped room,
smoky and foul with the smell of fish and dirt, was home to him--the mud
floor, worn smooth and hard with use, was strewn with mats and skins
which served for chairs and beds. There was a fireplace in the center,
and over it a rack on which smoked fish hung, well out of the reach of
the wolf-like dogs that lay about gnawing at old bones. It was usually
dry in wet weather, warm in cold weather, and cool when the sun was hot.
It was where he went for food when he was hungry; it was where he slept
on soft buffalo robes and bear skins when he was tired; it was where he
heard good stories, and, best of all, it was where his mother spent most
of her time.

But before Pontiac was many years old he knew that the wigwam was the
place for women and children, and that it was a shame for a man not to
follow the deer through the forest, and go upon the warpath. He saw that
if a man stayed at home and loved ease and comfort his squaw would scold
him with a shrill tongue. But if he went off to hunt, it was different.
Then, when he came home for a short time, he might lounge on a bear skin
while his squaw worked hard to make him happy, cooking his meals,
fetching clear water from the spring, and dressing the skins he had
brought from the hunt.

Pontiac liked to watch his mother while she stood weaving the wet rushes
into mats to cover the lodge in summer, or while she sat on the floor
with her feet crossed under her, making baskets out of sweet grass or
embroidering with brightly dyed porcupine quills. But if he showed his
pleasure or offered to help her, she looked stern and shook her head,
saying, "Go out into the field and run; then you will be swift when you
are a man;" or "go into the forest and shoot rabbits with your little
bow and arrow, so that you may one day be a great hunter like your
father."

All this made little Pontiac feel that the great fields and forests were
his--his to find his pleasure in while he was a boy; his to find his
work in when he should become a man.

He learned, too, that his very life depended on the forests he loved. He
could never forget the cruel winter days when he had asked his mother
again and again for fish and meat, and she had told him to be still and
wait till his father brought meat from the forest. And he had waited
there long with his hollow-eyed mother, crouch