Little Oriental that she was, she was able to combine the
dry text of her history book with the green of the trees,
the gray of the church, and the brown of the monk's robes,
and evolve a thrilling mental picture therefrom. The tag
game and her noisy little companions vanished. She was
peopling the place with stealthy Indians. Stealthy,
cunning, yet savagely brave. They bore no relation to the
abject, contemptible, and rather smelly Oneidas who came to
the back door on summer mornings, in calico, and ragged
overalls, with baskets of huckleberries on their arm, their
pride gone, a broken and conquered people. She saw them
wild, free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-
peddling Oneidas among them. They were Sioux, and
Pottawatomies (that last had the real Indian sound), and
Winnebagos, and Menomonees, and Outagamis. She made them
taciturn, and beady-eyed, and lithe, and fleet, and every
other adjectival thing her imagination and history book
could supply. The fat and placid Capuchin Fathers on the
hill became Jesuits, sinister, silent, powerful, with
France and the Church of Rome behind them. From the shelter
of that big oak would step Nicolet, the brave, first among
Wisconsin explorers, and last to receive the credit for his
hardihood. Jean Nicolet! She loved the sound of it. And
with him was La Salle, straight, and slim, and elegant, and
surely wearing ruffles and plumes and sword even in a canoe.
And Tonty, his Italian friend and fellow adventurer--Tonty
of the satins and velvets, graceful, tactful, poised, a
shadowy figure; his menacing iron hand, so feared by the
ignorant savages, encased always in a glove. Surely a
perfumed g--- Slap! A rude shove that jerked her head back