And now the farmers having learned that birds
are their friends wholesale slaughter has been abolished.
We seldom saw deer, though their tracks were common. The Yankee
explained that they traveled and fed mostly at night, and hid in
tamarack swamps and brushy places in the daytime, and how the Indians
knew all about them and could find them whenever they were hungry.
Indians belonging to the Menominee and Winnebago tribes occasionally
visited us at our cabin to get a piece of bread or some matches, or to
sharpen their knives on our grindstone, and we boys watched them
closely to see that they didn't steal Jack. We wondered at their
knowledge of animals when we saw them go direct to trees on our farm,
chop holes in them with their tomahawks and take out coons, of the
existence of which we had never noticed the slightest trace. In
winter, after the first snow, we frequently saw three or four Indians
hunting deer in company, running like hounds on the fresh, exciting
tracks. The escape of the deer from these noiseless, tireless hunters
was said to be well-nigh impossible; they were followed to the death.
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