And Catharine was glad when, after many go months of patient teaching, the Indian girl asked permission to kneel down with her white friend, and pray to the Great Spirit and His Son in the same words that Christ Jesus gave to his disciples; and if the full meaning of that holy prayer, so full of humility and love, and moral justice, was not fully understood by her whose lips repeated it, yet even the act of worship and the desire to do that which she had been told was right, was, doubtless, a sacrifice better than the pagan rites which that young girl had witnessed among her father’s people, who, blindly following the natural impulse of man in his depraved nature, regarded deeds of blood and cruelty as among the highest of human virtues, and gloried in those deeds of vengeance at which the Christian mind revolts with horror.
Indiana took upon herself the management of the rice, drying, husking and storing it, the two lads working under her direction. She caused several forked stakes to be cut and sharpened and driven into the ground; on these were laid four poles, so as to form a frame, over which she then stretched the bass-mat, which she secured by means of forked pegs to the frame on the mat; she then spread out the rice thinly, and lighted a fire beneath, taking good care not to let the flame set fire to the mat, the object being rather to keep up a strong, slow heat, by means of the red embers. She next directed the boys to supply her with pine or cedar boughs, which she stuck in close together, so as to enclose the fire within the area of the stakes. This was done to concentrate the heat and cause it to bear upwards with more power; the rice being frequently stirred with a sort of long-handled, flat shovel. After the rice was sufficiently dried, the next thing to be done was separating it from the husk, and this was effected by putting it by small quantities into the iron pot, and with a sort of wooden pestle or beetle, rubbing it round and round against the sides. _[FN: The Indians often make use of a very rude, primitive sort of mortar, by hollowing out a bass-wood stump, and rubbing the rice with a wooden pounder.]_ If they had not had the iron pot, a wooden trough must have been substituted in its stead.