saw the
hare leap into the thicket and the deer dart away at his approach he was
very sad, because he knew that if the animals of the forest should die,
or go and hide where the Indians could not hunt them, the Indians would
starve for want of food. "Must our lives depend on the hare and on the
red deer?" asked Hiawatha, and he prayed to the Great Manito to tell him
of some food that the Indians might always be able to find when they
were hungry.

The next day, Hiawatha walked by the bank of the river, and saw the wild
rice growing and the blueberries and the wild strawberries and the
grape-vine that filled the air with pleasant odors; and he knew that
when cold winter came, all this fruit would wither and the Indians would
have no more of it to eat. Again he prayed to the Great Manito to tell
him of some food that the Indians might enjoy in winter and summer, in
autumn and in spring.

The third day that Hiawatha fasted, he was too weak to walk about the
forest, and he sat by the shore of the lake and watched the yellow perch
darting about in the sunny water. Far out in the middle of the lake he
saw Nahma, the big sturgeon, leap into the air with a shower of spray
and fall back into the water with a crash; and every now and then the
pike would chase a school of minnows into the shallow water at the edges
of the lake and dart among them like an arrow. And Hiawatha thought of
how a hot summer might dry up the lakes and rivers and kill the fish, or
drive them into such deep water that nobody could catch them; and he
called out to the Great Manito, asking a third time for some food that
the Indians could store away and use when there was no game in the
forest, and no fruit on the river banks or in the fields, and no fish in
any of the lakes and rivers.

On the fourth day that Hiawatha fasted, he was so weak from hunger that
he could not even go out and sit beside the lake, but lay on his back
in his wigwam and watched the rising sun burn away the mist, and he
looked up into the blue sky, wondering if the Great Manito had heard his
prayers and would tell him of this food that he wished so much to find.
And just as the sun was sinking down behind the hills, Hiawatha saw a
young man with golden hair coming through the forest toward his wigwam,
and the young man wore a wonderful dress of the brightest green, with
silky yellow fringes and gay tassels that waved behind him in the wind.

The young man walked right into Hiawath