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Show : 262 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. boasted that he had killed two cows that morning, and would have killed a third if the dust had not blinded him so that he had to drop his bow and arrows and press both hands against his eyes to stop the pain. The fire-light fell upon his wrinkled face and shrivelled figure as he sat telling his story with such inimitable gesticulation that every man in the lodge broke into a laugh. Old Mene-Seela was one of the few Indians in the village with whom I would have trusted myself alone without suspicion, and the only one from whom I should have received a gift or a service without the certainty that it proceeded from an interested motive. l-Ie was a great friend to the whites. He li]{ed to be in their society, and was very vain of the favors he had received from them. He told me one afternoon, as we were sitting together in his son's lodge, that he considered the beaver and the whites the wisest people on earth; indeed, he was convinced they were the same ; and an incident which had happened to him long before had assured him of this. So he began the following story, and as the pipe passed in turn to him, Reynal availed himself of these interruptions to translate what had preceded. But the old man accompanied his words with such admirable pantomime that translation was hardly ·necessary. He said that when he was very young, and had never yet seen a white man, he and three or four of his companions were out on a beaver hunt, and he crawled into a large beaver-lodge, to examine what was there. Sometimes he was creeping on his hands and knees, sometimes he was obliged to swim, and sometimes to lie flat on his face and drag himself along. In this way he crawled a great distance under ground. It was THE HUNTING CAMP. 263 very dark, cold and close, so that at last he was almost suffocated, and fell into a swoon. When he began to recover, he could just distinguish the voices of his companions outside, who had given him up for lost, and were singing his deathsong. At first he could see nothing, but soon he discerned something white before him, and at length plainly distinguished three people, entirely white, one man and two women, sitting at the edge of a black pool of water. I-Ie became alarmed and though it high time to retreat. I-I a ving succeeded, after great trouble, in reaching day light again, he went straight to the spot directly above the pool of water where he had seen the three mysterious beings. I-Iere he beat a hole with his warclub in the ground, and sat down to watch. In a moment the nose of. an old male beaver appeared at the opening. MeneSeela instrmtly seized him and dragged him up, when two other beavers, both females, thrust out their heads, and these he served in the same way. 'These,' continued the old man, 'must have been the three white people whom I saw sitting at the edge of the water.' Mene-Seela was the grand depositary of the legends and traditions of the village. I succeeded, however, in getting frmn him only a few fragments. Like all Indians, he was excessively superstitious, and continually saw some reason for withholding his stories. 'It is a bad thing,' he would say, 'to tell the tales in summer. Stay with us till next winter, and I will tell you every thing I know; but now our war-parties are going out, and our young men will be killed if I sit down to tell stories before the frost begins.' But to leave this digression. this spot five days, during three • We remained encamped on of which the hunters were at • |
