Stories of American Life and AdventureEggleston, Edward
History
Stories of American Life and Adventure
Eggleston, Edward
Readers -- History; United States -- History -- Juvenile literature
Spelman and a Dutchman, who also lived with Powhatan, began to be
afraid that he would not protect them any longer. So, when a chief of
the Potomac Indians visited Powhatan, and asked the Dutchman and the
boy to go to his country, they left Powhatan and went back with them.
Powhatan sent messengers after them, who killed the Dutchman. Henry
Spelman ran away into the woods. Powhatan's men followed him, but the
Potomacs got hold of Powhatan's men, and held them back until Spelman
could get away. The boy managed at last to get to the country of the
Potomac Indians.
It was very lucky for Spelman that he was among the Indians at this
time. Nearly all the white people in Jamestown were killed, or died of
hunger. Spelman lived among the Indians for years. During this time
more people came from England, and settled at Jamestown. A ship from
Jamestown came up into the Potomac River to trade. The captain of the
ship bought Spelman from the Indians. He was now a young man, and, as
he could speak both the Indian language and the English, he was very
useful in carrying on trade between the white men and the Indians.
At the time that Henry Spelman first went among the Indians, they had
no iron tools except a very few that they had bought of the white
people. They had no guns, nor knives, nor hatchets. They had no hoes
nor axes. They made their tools out of hard wood, shells, stones, deer
horns, and other such things. They had not yet bought blankets from
the white men, but made their clothes mostly out of the skins of
animals.
The Indians could not learn much about the white man's arts from
Spelman, because he did not know much. Besides, he had no iron of
which to make tools. He learned to make arrows of cane such as we use
for fishing rods. He also learned to point his arrows with the spur of
a wild turkey, or a piece of stone. These arrow points he stuck into
the arrow with a kind of glue. But he first had to learn how to make
his glue out of deers' horns. Before he could make any of the tools,
he had to make himself a knife, as the Indians did. Having no iron,
the blade of his knife was made out of a beaver's tooth, which is very
sharp, and will cut wood. He set this tooth in the end of a stick. You
see how hard it was for an Indian to get tools. He had to learn to
make one tool in order to use that in making another tool.
One of the principal things that an Indian had to do was to make a
canoe; for, as the Indians had no horses, they could travel only by
water, unless they went afoot. Canoes were the only boats they had.
They had to make canoes without any of the tools that white men use.
Let us explain this by a story about Henry and an Indian boy. The
things in the story may not have happened just as they are told, but
the account of how things are made by the Indians is all true.
THE MAKING OF A CANOE.
Henry had a young Indian friend whose name was Keketaw. One day
Keketaw said to him, "Let us go into the woods and make a canoe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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