Two Little Savages

by Ernest Thompson Seton

  VIII

  Beginnings of Woodlore

  During this time Yan had so concentrated all his powers on the shantythat he had scarcely noticed the birds and wild things. Such was histemperament--one idea only, and that with all his strength.

  His heart was more and more in his kingdom now he longed to comeand live here. But he only dared to dream that some day he might beallowed to pass a night in the shanty. This was where he would leadhis ideal life--the life of an Indian with all that is bad and cruelleft out. Here he would show men how to live without cutting down allthe trees, spoiling all the streams, and killing every living thing.He would learn how to get the fullest pleasure out of the woodshimself and then teach others how to do the same. Though the birds andFourfoots fascinated him, he would not have hesitated to shoot onehad he been able, but to see a tree cut down always caused himgreat distress. Possibly he realized that the bird might be quicklyreplaced, but the tree, never.

  To carry out his plan he must work hard at school, for books hadmuch that he needed. Perhaps some day he might get a chance to seeAudubon's drawings, and so have all his bird worries settled by asingle book.

  That summer a new boy at school added to Yan's savage equipment. Thisboy was neither good nor bright; he was a dunce, and had been expelledfrom a boarding school for misconduct, but he had a number ofschoolboy accomplishments that gave him a tinge of passing glory.He could tie a lot of curious knots in a string. He could make awonderful birdy warble, and he spoke a language that he called Tutnee.Yan was interested in all, but especially the last. He teased andbribed till he was admitted to the secret. It consisted in spellingevery word, leaving the five vowels as they are, but doubling eachconsonant and putting a "u" between. Thus "b" became "bub," "d" "dud,""m" "mum," and so forth, except that "c" was "suk," "h" "hash," "x""zux," and "w" "wak."

  The sample given by the new boy, "sus-hash-u-tut u-pup yak-o-u-rurmum-o-u-tut-hash," was said to be a mode of enjoining silence.

  This language was "awful useful," the new boy said, to keep the otherfellows from knowing what you were saying, which it certainly did. Yanpractised hard at it and within a few weeks was an adept. He couldhandle the uncouth sentences better than his teacher, and he wassingularly successful in throwing in accents and guttural tones thatimparted a delightfully savage flavour, and he rejoiced in jabberingaway to the new boy in the presence of others so that he might bask inthe mystified look on the faces of those who were not skilled in thetongue of the Tutnees.

  He made himself a bow and arrows. They were badly made and he couldhit nothing with them, but he felt so like an Indian when he drew thearrow to its head, that it was another pleasure.

  He made a number of arrows with hoop-iron heads, these he couldfile at home in the woodshed. The heads were jagged and barbed anddouble-barbed. These arrows were frightful-looking things. They seemedpositively devilish in their ferocity, and were proportionatelygratifying. These he called his "war arrows," and would send one intoa tree and watch it shiver, then grunt "Ugh, heap good," and rejoicein the squirming of the imaginary foe he had pierced.

  He found a piece of sheepskin and made of it a pair of very poormoccasins. He ground an old castaway putty knife into a scalpingknife; the notch in it for breaking glass was an annoying defect untilhe remembered that some Indians decorate their weapons with a notchfor each enemy it has killed, and this, therefore, might do duty as akill-tally. He made a sheath for the knife out of scraps of leatherleft off the moccasins. Some water-colours, acquired by a school swap,and a bit of broken mirror held in a split stick, were necessary partsof his Indian toilet. His face during the process of make-up wasalways a battle-ground between the horriblest Indian scowland a grin of delight at his success in diabolizing his visage withthe paints. Then with painted face and a feather in his hair he wouldproudly range the woods in his little kingdom and store up every scrapof woodlore he could find, invent or learn from his schoolmates.

  Yan's toilet]

  Odd things that he found in the woods he would bring to his shanty:curled sticks, feathers, bones, skulls, fungus, shells, an oldcowhorn--things that interested him, he did not know why. He madeIndian necklaces of the shells, strung together alternately withthe backbone of a fish. He let his hair grow as long as possible,employing various stratagems, even the unpalatable one of combing itto avoid the monthly trim of the maternal scissors. He lay for hourswith the sun beating on his face to correct his colour to standard,and the only semblance of personal vanity that he ever had waspleasure in hearing disparaging remarks about the darkness of hiscomplexion. He tried to do everything as an Indian would do it,striking Indian poses, walking carefully with his toes turned in,breaking off twigs to mark a place, guessing at the time by the sun,and grunting "Ugh" or "Wagh" when anything surprised him. Disparagingremarks about White-men, delivered in supposed Indian dialect, werean important part of his pastime. "Ugh, White-men heap no good" and"Wagh, paleface--pale fool in woods," were among his favourites.

  He was much influenced by phrases that caught his ear. "The brownsinewy arm of the Indian," was one of them. It discovered to him thathis own arms were white as milk. There was, however, a simple remedy.He rolled up his sleeves to the shoulder and exposed them to the fullglare of the sun. Then later, under the spell of the familiar phrase,"The warrior was naked to the waist," he went a step further--hedetermined to be brown to the waist--so discarded his shirt during thewhole of one holiday. He always went to extremes. He remembered nowthat certain Indians put their young warriors through an initiationcalled the Sun-dance, so he danced naked round the fire in the blazingsun and sat around naked all one day.

  He noticed a general warmness before evening, but it was at night thathe really felt the punishment of his indiscretion. He was in a burningheat. He scarcely slept all night. Next day he was worse, and his armand shoulder were blistered. He bore it bravely, fearing only that theHome Government might find it out, in which case he would have faredworse. He had read that the Indians grease the skin for sunburn, so hewent to the bathroom and there used goose grease for lack of Buffalofat. This did give some relief, and in a few days he was better andhad the satisfaction of peeling the dead skin from his shoulders andarms.

  Yan made a number of vessels out of Birch bark, stitching the edgeswith root fibers, filling the bottom with a round wooden disc, andcementing the joints with pine gum so that they would hold water.

  In the distant river he caught some Catfish and brought themhome--that, is, to his shanty. There he made a fire and broiledthem--very badly--but he ate them as a great delicacy. The sharp bonein each of their side fins he saved, bored a hole through its thickend, smoothed it, and so had needles to stitch his Birch bark. He keptthem in a bark box with some lumps of resin, along with some barkfiber, an Indian flint arrow-head given him by a schoolmate, andthe claws of a large Owl, found in the garbage heap back of thetaxidermist's shop.

  One day on the ash heap in their own yard in town he saw a new,strange bird. He was always seeing new birds, but this was of unusualinterest. He drew its picture as it tamely fed near him. A dull, ashygray, with bronzy yellow spots on crown and rump, and white bars onits wings. His "Birds of Canada" gave no light; he searched throughall the books he could find, but found no clew to its name. It wasyears afterward before he learned that this was the young male PineGrosbeak.

  Another day, under the bushes not far from his shanty, he found asmall Hawk lying dead. He clutched it as a wonderful prize, spent anhour in looking at its toes, its beak, its wings, its every feather;then he set to work to make a drawing of it. A very bad drawing itproved, although it was the labour of days, and the bird was crawlingwith maggots before he had finished. But every feather and every spotwas faithfully copied, was duly set down on paper. One of hisfriends said it was a Chicken-hawk. That name stuck in Yan's memory.Thenceforth the Chicken-hawk and its every marking were familiar tohim. Even in after years, when he had learned that this must have beena young "Sharp-shin," the name "Chicken-hawk" was always
readier onhis lips.

  But he met with another and a different Hawk soon afterward. This onewas alive and flitting about in the branches of a tree over his head.It was very small--less than a foot in length. Its beak was veryshort, its legs, wings and tail long; its head was bluish and its backcoppery red; on the tail was a broad, black crossbar. As the bird flewabout and balanced on the boughs, it pumped its tail. This told himit was a Hawk, and the colours he remembered were those of the maleSparrow-hawk, for here his bird book helped with its rude travesty of"Wilson's" drawing of this bird. Yet two other birds he saw close athand and drew partly from memory. The drawings were like this, andfrom the picture on a calendar he learned that one was a Rail; froma drawing in the bird book that the other was a Bobolink. And thesenames he never forgot. He had his doubts about the sketching atfirst--it seemed an un-Indian thing to do, until he remembered thatthe Indians painted pictures on their shields and on their teepees. Itwas really the best of all ways for him to make reliable observation.

  The bookseller of the town had some new books in his window about thistime. One, a marvellous work called "Poisonous Plants," Yan was eagerto see. It was exposed in the window for a time. Two of the largeplates were visible from the street; one was Henbane, the otherStramonium. Yan gazed at them as often as he could. In a week theywere gone; but the names and looks were forever engraved on hismemory. Had he made bold to go in and ask permission to see the work,his memory would have seized most of it in an hour.