American fiction -- 19th century; Historical fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction
The week which succeeded the arrival of our party at Chateau au Miel,
or Castle Meal, as le Bourdon used to call his abode, was one of very
active labor. It was necessary to house the adventurers, and the little
habitation already built was quite insufficient for such a purpose.
It was given to the females, who used it as a private apartment for
themselves, while the cooking, eating, and even sleeping, so far as the
males were concerned, were all done beneath the trees of the openings.
But a new chiente was soon constructed, which, though wanting in the
completeness and strength of Castle Meal, was sufficient for the wants
of these sojourners in the wilderness. It is surprising with how little
of those comforts which civilization induces us to regard as necessaries
we can get along, when cast into the midst of the western wilds. The
female whose foot has trodden, from infancy upward, on nothing harder
than a good carpet-who has been reared amid all the appliances of
abundance and art, seems at once to change her nature, along with her
habits, and often proves a heroine, and an active assistant, when there
was so much reason to apprehend she might turn out to be merely an
encumbrance. In the course of a life that is now getting to be well
stored with experience of this sort, as well as of many other varieties,
we can recall a hundred cases of women, who were born and nurtured
in affluence and abundance, who have cheerfully quitted the scenes of
youth, their silks and satins, their china and plate, their mahogany and
Brussels, to follow husbands and fathers into the wilderness, there
to compete with the savage, often for food, and always for the final
possession of the soil!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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