corn. And then he was so peaceable that, for the eighteen snows that
he lived in the great village of the Ottawas, none had ever beheld him
angry, or seen disquietude in his eye, or heard repining from his
lips. He coveted not distinction in war, he never spoke of the field
of strife, nor sang a war-song, nor fasted to procure bloody dreams,
nor shaved his crown to the gallant scalp-lock, nor painted his cheeks
and brow with the ochre of wrath, nor taught himself to dance the
war-dance--his actions and pursuits were those of a woman, and his
thoughts and wishes all for peace. Among a people so valiant, and so
fond of eating their foes[A], as the Ottawas, a disposition so feeble
and woman-like as that possessed by the Child of the Hare would have
drawn down great anger and contempt upon its possessor. But, believing
that the youth had their favourite god for his father, they never
reproached him for his cowardice and preference of peace to war, but
contented themselves with saying that "he was a very, very good boy,
but he would never become a chief of a people more warlike than the
wren or the prairie dog." The laugh that would follow these speeches
had nothing of ill-nature in it, for all loved the boy, cowardly and
ugly as he was, and each would have shielded him from harm at the risk
of his own life. And thus lived the Child of the Hare till the snows
of the seventeenth winter had melted and gone to the embrace of the
Great Lake.

[Footnote A: As I have remarked in a note (vol. i, page 305.) this is
a metaphorical expression, signifying nothing more than that they will
wage a bloody and destructive war.]

It was then that the boy, who had become a man in stature, was seen to
absent himself from the village, and to shun the toils which had once
been pleasures to him. No one knew whither he went, or for what
purpose. Usually, at the going down of the sun, he would repair to
the forest, and be absent for the greater portion of the period of
darkness. Sometimes his journeys were undertaken by daylight. The aged
men asked him whither he went--he made no answer; the young maidens,
always famous for coming at the bottom of secrets, and tracking
mysteries as one tracks a badger, sought to win the secret, but with
no greater success. At last, a cunning old woman found out--what will
not a cunning old woman find out--the secret.

Upon a large plain, which stretched from very near the great village
of the Ottawas, a full da