hem in a history......

In the falling of the night, at the mauve hour, our ship having been
made fast, we go ashore and talk with the Indians who are camped here
in a wigwam. One of the passengers, who has lived among the Crees for
many years, tells me I express myself with redundancy in that the
literal meaning of wigwam is camping-ground. She says the Indians have
many grotesque folk tales, which are told by the men. Each story has a
moral which they desire their wives to consider from an educative
standpoint. Once there was a man whose _utim_ (that is to say his dog)
used to turn into an _iskwao_, or woman, when it became dark. She had
yellow hair and her arms were white and soft like the breast feathers
of a young bird. This happened long ago, before the Indians were
baptized and when people were not so pious as they are now. Any man
can do the same thing to this day if he happens to know the magic
formula.

There is also a tale about a woman of the woods whom we, in our
scientific conceit, call the echo. Once when her man was away for many
moons on the great _sepe_, or river, the woman took another husband, so
that when her man came back she flouted him and slapped his face. That
night the moon changed her into a voice, and now she calls for her
husband to come and love her, but he only mocks at her.

This habit of the husbands in telling tales with palpable deductions
attached would seem to be common to other races than the Indians, for
the Romans, likewise, had a story about the echo. It appears that
Jupiter confided to Madam Echo the history of his amours, and when she
told his secrets among her friends she was deprived of speech and could
only repeat the questions which were asked of her. The Cree story is
the better one. It has a fine human motive which the other lacks, and
also it drops, a much-needed tribute on the worn altar of domesticity.

When a fire is lighted with birch bark and tamarack knots, we sit
beside it and are more merry than you could believe.

The sweetheart of Jacques dances for us to the well-cadenced rhythm of
a Tea Song. I cannot spell her Indian name, but it means "Fat of the
Flowers," by which term they express our word "nectar." The cree is a
droll language.

"Ha! He! ne matatow,
Ha! He! ne saghehow."

she chants and rechants as the fitful flames make sharp high-lights on
her dark skin, causing her to appear as the flying figure of a bronze
Daphne, and, i