ho, blindly following the
natural impulse of man in his depraved nature, regarded deeds of blood
and cruelty as among the highest of human virtues, and gloried in those
deeds of vengeance at which the Christian mind revolts with horror.

Indiana took upon herself the management of the rice, drying, husking
and storing it, the two lads working under her direction. She caused
several forked stakes to be cut and sharpened and driven into the
ground; on these were laid four poles, so as to form a frame, over which
she then stretched the bass-mat, which she secured by means of forked
pegs to the frame on the mat; she then spread out the rice thinly, and
lighted a fire beneath, taking good care not to let the flame set fire
to the mat, the object being rather to keep up a strong, slow heat, by
means of the red embers. She next directed the boys to supply her
with pine or cedar boughs, which she stuck in close together, so as
to enclose the fire within the area of the stakes. This was done to
concentrate the heat and cause it to bear upwards with more power; the
rice being frequently stirred with a sort of long-handled, flat shovel.
After the rice was sufficiently dried, the next thing to be done was
separating it from the husk, and this was effected by putting it by
small quantities into the iron pot, and with a sort of wooden pestle
or beetle, rubbing it round and round against the sides. _[FN:
The Indians often make use of a very rude, primitive sort of mortar,
by hollowing out a bass-wood stump, and rubbing the rice with a wooden
pounder.]_ If they had not had the iron pot, a wooden trough must have
been substituted in its stead.

When the rice was husked, the loose chaff was winnowed from it in a flat
basket like a sieve, and it was then put by in coarse birch baskets,
roughly sewed with leather-wood bark, or bags made of matting, woven by
the little squaw from the cedar-bark. A portion was also parched, which
was simply done by putting the rice dry into the iron pot, and setting
it on hot embers, stirring the grain till it burst: it was then stored
by for use. Rice thus prepared is eaten dry, as a substitute for bread,
by the Indians. The lake was now swarming with wild fowl of various
kinds; crowds of ducks were winging their way across it from morning
till night, floating in vast flocks upon its surface, or rising in noisy
groups if an eagle or fish-hawk appeared sailing with slow, majestic
circles above them, then se