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The girl counted up the food in the sleigh; there was not more than two days' supply, and Kotuko looked over the iron heads and the deer-sinew fastenings of his harpoon and his seal-lance and his bird-dart. There was nothing else to do. "We shall go to Sedna soon very soon," the girl whispered. "In three days we shall lie down and go. Will your tornaq do nothing?
And these people knew not the wisdom of my people, in that they snared and pitted their meat and in battle used clubs and stone throwing-sticks and were unaware of the virtues of arrows swift-flying, notched on the end to fit the thong of deer-sinew, well-twisted, that sprang into straightness when released to the spring of the ask-stick bent in the middle.
His father taught him to shape axe-handles, to curve lacrosse sticks, to weave their deer-sinew netting, to tan skins, to plant corn, to model arrows and most difficult of all to "feather" them, to "season" bows, to chop trees, to burn, hollow, fashion and "man" a dugout canoe, to use the paddle, to gauge the wind and current of that treacherous Grand River, to learn wild cries to decoy bird and beast for food.
The good Lord took the trouble to make me, and it seems kind of onjustifiable for me to prove He plumb wasted His time. You tell Maggy I done it for her. I ain't hidin' my light under a bushel, because I need it to see by. Ouch! says he. 'This racket hurts! "I reckon it did. I sewed him up with a piece of deer-sinew and a darning-needle.
The carpenter arranged the hall, or large public room, cleared away the tables, fitted up a device in evergreens which was supposed to represent the words Loo and Reu, and otherwise garnished the ball-room with specimens of his originality and taste, while old Fiddlestrings, who was a self-taught half-breed, fitted to his violin a new string made by his wife that day from a deer-sinew.
Out of one of these skins he made excellent moccasins, piercing the holes with a sharpened bone bodkin, and passing the sinews of the deer through, as he had seen his father do, by fixing a stout fish-bone to the deer-sinew thread.
His shield was the hide from a buffalo's neck, hardened with hoof glue. Its center was a pole-cat skin; its edges were fringed with eagle feathers and antelope hoofs that rattled. His battle-axe was of hammered iron blade and skull-pecker, with ash handle four feet long and deer-sinew grip. Eagle feathers and fur tufts decorated it.
"Wait a little, Lady Mary, let us see what there is in the basket besides the rice and the maple-sugar." "What a lovely thing this is! dear nurse, what can it be?" "It is a sheath for your scissors, my dear; it is made of doe-skin, embroidered with white beads, and coloured quills split fine, and sewn with deer-sinew thread. Look at these curious bracelets."
In all lives there are moments that memory paints in bright, crude colors, like pictures in a child's book, and so this scene looks to me now. I can see the crowding Ottawas, their bodies painted red and black, their nose pendants a pebble hung on a deer-sinew swinging against their greasy lips as they shouted plaudits or derision.
The wooden haft, the deer-sinew bow-string, the perishable articles of food and drink have long since decayed within the damp tumulus: but the harder stone and earthenware articles have survived till now, to tell the story of that crude and simple early faith.
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