Two Little Savages - Being the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned by Ernest Thompson Seton
page 37 of 465 (07%)
page 37 of 465 (07%)
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glare of the sun. Then later, under the spell of the familiar phrase,
"The warrior was naked to the waist," he went a step further--he determined to be brown to the waist--so discarded his shirt during the whole of one holiday. He always went to extremes. He remembered now that certain Indians put their young warriors through an initiation called the Sun-dance, so he danced naked round the fire in the blazing sun and sat around naked all one day. He noticed a general warmness before evening, but it was at night that he really felt the punishment of his indiscretion. He was in a burning heat. He scarcely slept all night. Next day he was worse, and his arm and shoulder were blistered. He bore it bravely, fearing only that the Home Government might find it out, in which case he would have fared worse. He had read that the Indians grease the skin for sunburn, so he went to the bathroom and there used goose grease for lack of Buffalo fat. This did give some relief, and in a few days he was better and had the satisfaction of peeling the dead skin from his shoulders and arms. Yan made a number of vessels out of Birch bark, stitching the edges with root fibers, filling the bottom with a round wooden disc, and cementing the joints with pine gum so that they would hold water. In the distant river he caught some Catfish and brought them home--that, is, to his shanty. There he made a fire and broiled them--very badly--but he ate them as a great delicacy. The sharp bone in each of their side fins he saved, bored a hole through its thick end, smoothed it, and so had needles to stitch his Birch bark. He kept them in a bark box with some lumps of resin, along with some bark fiber, an Indian flint arrow-head given him by a schoolmate, and |
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