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Michigan STARTING LIFE ANEW IN THE WOODS
The Indian had shot a deer, and a settler finding it, ere the Indian came up, took it home. The red man tracked the settler to his cabin, where, in the loft overhead, he found his deer secreted, and claimed it. The settler, unheeding his claim, turned him out of doors. This act, and the injustice of taking his deer, made the Indian mad. For a time we all feared there would be a tragical end to this affair. But there was nothing more heard of it.
At another time a squaw came to the house, and seeing a small jug in the corner eagerly took it up, and cried out "whis-kee!" My mother told her it was vinegar; she, shaking the jug, retorted: "you lie—-whis-kee!" The broomstick would have hit the squaw's head if she had not dodged and ran out of doors.
My brother was splitting rails alone in the woods one day, when an Indian, coming up behind him, saluted him with a boo shoo so unexpectedly, that he turned around to strike, with his beetle, some animal, he supposed, when he was confronted by a tall Pottawattomie; and the next thing he said was, "sam—mock—me—sam—mock!" meaning tobacco. Giving him the only plug of tobacco he had, the Indian took it, bit off a piece, and putting the rest in his pocket walked away. "That was cool, " thought my brother, "and I five miles from another plug of tobacco!"
'Tis said one of the old fur traders was accustomed to weigh the furs he bought of his Indian customers in the following manner: Putting the furs on one side of the scale he would say "little finger weigh so much; two fingers, so much; " one hand so much, two hands so much, and so on, bearing down on the scale with one finger or two, or with the hand, as the case might be.
Early Michigan
Page 8
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