Stránka:book 1912.djvu/66

34 The Book of Woodcraft tims, under dire stress of hunger or travel, and was dis- approved and denounced by all their great teachers. During my Northern journey in 1907 I selected for one of my guides a fine young Indian named Freesay. At the end of our first journey I said to him: "Would you like to go with me still farther, to the Far North country, and see the things your people have not yet seen? I will give you good wages and a big present. " He replied: "Yes; I would like to go very much, but my uncle [his adoptive father] told me not to go beyond Pike's Lobstick, and so I cannot go. " And he did not, though his uncle was 350 miles away. This was one case out of several noted, and many heard of. The Fifth Command- ment is a very big, strong law in the wigwam. KINDNESS At every first meeting of red men and whites, the whites were inferior in numbers, and yet were received with the utmost kindness, until they treacherously betrayed the men who had helped and harbored them. Even Christopher Columbus, blind and burnt up with avarice as he was, and soul-poisoned with superstition, and contempt for an alien race, yet had the fairness to write home to his royal accompHces in crime, the King and Queen of Spain: "I swear to your Majesties that there is not a better people in the world than these; more affectionate, affable or mild. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they always speak smilingly. (Catlin, "N. A. Indian," II., p. 246.) Jonathan Carver, who Hved among the Sioux from 1766-9, after speaking of their severity in dealing with enemies, says: