hes, pumpkins,
tobacco, and maize, or Indian corn, which they ground to meal by rubbing
between two stones. For hunting they had bows, arrows with stone heads,
hatchets of flint, and spears. In summer they went almost naked. In
winter they wore clothing made from the skins of fur-bearing animals and
the hides of buffalo and deer. For navigating streams and rivers, lakes
and bays, they constructed canoes of birch bark sewed together with
thongs of deerskin and smeared at the joints with spruce-tree gum.

%62. Traits of Character.%--Living an outdoor life, and depending for
daily food not so much on the maize they raised as on the fish they
caught and the animals they killed, the Indians were most expert
woodsmen. They were swift of foot, quick-witted, keen-sighted, and most
patient of hunger, fatigue, and cold. White men were amazed at the
rapidity with which the Indian followed the most obscure trail over the
most difficult ground, at the perfection with which he imitated the bark
of the wolf, the hoot of the owl, the call of the moose, and at the
catlike tread with which he walked over beds of autumn leaves the side
of the grazing deer.

[Illustration: Ornamental pipe]

[Illustration: Quiver, with bows and arrows]

Courage and fortitude he possessed in the highest degree. Yet with his
bravery were associated all the vices, all the dark and crooked ways,
which are the resort of the cowardly and the weak. He was treacherous,
revengeful, and cruel beyond description. Much as he loved war (and war
was his chief occupation), the fair and open fight had no charm for him.
To his mind it was madness to take the scalp of an enemy at the risk of
his own, when he might waylay him in an ambush or shoot him with an
arrow from behind a tree. He was never so happy as when, at the dead of
night, he roused his sleeping victims with an unearthly yell and
massacred them by the light of their burning home.

%63. The French and the Indians.%--The ways in which French and
English colonists acted towards the Indian are highly characteristic,
and account for much in our history.

From the day when Champlain, in 1609, joined his Huron-Algonquin
neighbors and went with them on the warpath against the Iroquois, the
French held to the policy of making friends with the Indians. No pains
were spared to win them to the cause of France. They were flattered,
petted, treated with ceremonial respect, and became the companions, as
the women often