Tales Of An Old Bordertown And Along The Kankakee PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...the lodges informed the people whether the immediate vicinity was clear of any lurking emissaries of the foe. If it was found safe to do so, all the women and children of the village, when night had come, slipped out of the lodges without so much as a whisper. The burden, such as a bundle of clothing or an infant in its cradle, rested secure on the shoulders and neck, and was held in place by a band passing over the forehead. The limbs and body must be free. All ran to the landing where the overturned canoes were drawn up along the bank, and one by one, stepping on the fine hard gravel of a made beach, waded cautiously into deep water, swam very quietly through the lagoon that led off to the little river, rounded the bend, and glided away down stream. The Indian woman was the strongest and most adroit swimmer in all the world; the necessities of her life compelled such skill. But how was it possible for any human being to make progress through a water-course which, in some parts, was filled from bank to bank with entangling mosses reaching up to the very surface and waving with the current; or, in other parts, was nothing more than a wide bed of black mire with only a few inches of clear liquid shooting across its forbidding surface; or, in still other places, was too shallow for swimming, and yet with a bed of boiling quicksand where no living creature could walk? Such difficulties they had by no means lost sight of. A winding channel had been made through these obstructions, and this they had carefully kept open at all times. Nor could any swift-darting pickerel thread the mazes of that devious way with easier grace than that of the Indian women and girls, whose supple bodies, gliding through the channel, fretted the current less than...