This either arises from stupidity or indolence, perhaps from
both, but it is no doubt the cause of much of the sickness that prevails
among, them. With his feet stretched to the fire the Indian cares for
nothing else when reposing in his wigwam, and it is useless to urge the
improvement that might be made in his comfort; he listens with a face of
apathy, and utters his everlasting guttural, which saves him the trouble
of a more rational reply.

"Snow-bird" informed Catharine that the lodges would not again be
removed for some time, but that the men would hunt and fish, while the
squaws pursued their domestic labours. Catharine perceived that the
chief of the laborious part of the work fell to the share of the
females, who were very much more industrious and active than their
husbands; these, when not out hunting or fishing, were to be seen
reposing in easy indolence under the shade of the trees, or before the
tent fires, giving themselves little concern about anything that was
going on. The squaws were gentle, humble, and submissive; they bore
without a murmur pain, labour, hunger, and fatigue, and seemed to
perform every task with patience and good humour. They made the canoes,
in which the men sometimes assisted them, pitched the tents, converted
the skins of the animals which the men shot into clothes, cooked the
victuals, manufactured baskets of every kind, wove mats, dyed the quills
of the porcupine, sewed the mocassins, and in short performed a thousand
tasks which it would be difficult to enumerate.

Of the ordinary household work, such as is familiar to European females,
they of course knew nothing; they had no linen to wash or iron, no
floors to clean, no milking of cows, nor churning of butter.

Their carpets were fresh cedar boughs spread upon the ground, and only
renewed when they became offensively dirty from the accumulation of fish
bones and other offal, which are carelessly flung down during meals. Of
furniture they had none, their seat the ground, their table the
same, their beds mats or skins of animals,--such were the domestic
arrangements of the Indian camp. _[FN: Much improvement has taken
place of late years in the domestic economy of the Indians, and some of
their dwellings are clean and neat even for Europeans.]_ In the tent to
which Catharine belonged, which was that of the widow and her sons, a
greater degree of order and cleanliness prevailed than in any other, for
Catharine's natural love o