each. The heads of the
birds were hastily wrung off and thrust into the game-bags to be
counted, saving the bodies only of what were called game, the larger
squirrels, bob-whites, partridges, etc. The blood-stained bags of the
best slayers were soon bulging full. Then at a given hour all had to
stop and repair to the town, empty their dripping sacks, count the
heads, and go rejoicing to their dinner. Although, like other wild
boys, I was fond of shooting, I never had anything to do with these
abominable head-hunts. And now the farmers having learned that birds
are their friends wholesale slaughter has been abolished.

We seldom saw deer, though their tracks were common. The Yankee
explained that they traveled and fed mostly at night, and hid in
tamarack swamps and brushy places in the daytime, and how the Indians
knew all about them and could find them whenever they were hungry.

Indians belonging to the Menominee and Winnebago tribes occasionally
visited us at our cabin to get a piece of bread or some matches, or to
sharpen their knives on our grindstone, and we boys watched them
closely to see that they didn't steal Jack. We wondered at their
knowledge of animals when we saw them go direct to trees on our farm,
chop holes in them with their tomahawks and take out coons, of the
existence of which we had never noticed the slightest trace. In
winter, after the first snow, we frequently saw three or four Indians
hunting deer in company, running like hounds on the fresh, exciting
tracks. The escape of the deer from these noiseless, tireless hunters
was said to be well-nigh impossible; they were followed to the death.

Most of our neighbors brought some sort of gun from the old country,
but seldom took time to hunt, even after the first hard work of
fencing and clearing was over, except to shoot a duck or prairie
chicken now and then that happened to come in their way. It was only
the less industrious American settlers who left their work to go far
a-hunting. Two or three of our most enterprising American neighbors
went off every fall with their teams to the pine regions and cranberry
marshes in the northern part of the State to hunt and gather berries.
I well remember seeing their wagons loaded with game when they
returned from a successful hunt. Their loads consisted usually of half
a dozen deer or more, one or two black bears, and fifteen or twenty
bushels of cranberries; all solidly frozen. Part of both the berries
a