A happy boy was Charlie Bell in these days, as Uncle Isaac and Atkins gave him all the instruction in their power; and to complete the sum of his enjoyment, after he had worked with them six weeks, Uncle Isaac set him to making the front and end doors of panel-work, under his immediate inspection. He also had an opportunity to talk about the Indians, and seemed to be a great deal more concerned to know about their modes of getting along, and manufacturing articles of necessity or ornament, without tools of iron, than about their murdering and scalping.
Uncle Isaac could not, from personal knowledge, give him much information in respect to these matters, as, at the time he was among them, they were, and had been for a long period, supplied, both by the French and English, with guns, knives, hatchets, needles, and files; but he could furnish Charlie with abundant information which he had obtained from his Indian parents; for, as they have no books, but trust to their memories, they, by exercise, become very accurate, and their traditions are, in this way, handed down from father to son.
“But,” said Charlie, who had heard about Indians having cornfields, “how could they cut down trees and clear land with stone hatchets?”
“They didn’t cut them down; they bruised the bark, and girdled them, and then the trees died, and they set them on fire.”
“I should think it would have taken them forever, most, to clear a piece of land in that way.”
“So it did; but they did not clear one very often. When they got a field cleared, they planted corn on it perhaps for a hundred years.”
“They always made these fields by the salt water, and put fish in the hills. They taught the white people how to raise corn.”
“I have heard they made log canoes. How could they cut the trees down with their stone hatchets? and, more than all, how could they ever dig them out?”
“I will tell you, Mr. Inquisitive. An Indian would take a bag of parched corn to eat, a gourd shell to drink from, his stone hatchet, and go into the woods, find a suitable tree,--generally a dead, dry pine, with the limbs and bark all fallen off,--and at the foot of it would build a camp to sleep under. Then he would get a parcel of wet clay, and plaster the tree all around, then build a fire at the bottom to burn it off. The wet clay would prevent its burning too high up. Then he would sit and tend the fire, wet the clay, and beat off the coals as fast as they formed, till the tree fell; then cut it off, and hollow it in the same way.”