THE INDIAN LIFE AND CHARACTER: SCENES ILLUSTRATING TRIBAL SOCIETY, CUSTOMS, AMUSEMENTS, INDUSTRIES, LINGUISTICS, WAREFARE, AND SOMETHING OF SAVAGE ROMANCE WITHIN OUR BORDERS.

     The red man's hour on this stage is traced in something more than his flaked flints and stone implements.  His real story lives in the notebooks of those missionaries and travelers who came to this region in the twilight of Indian power.  It is these Coshocton records that are spread upon pages of American history.
     They give us an Indian picture that is part savage, part human, a glimpse of the primitive life in its real colors; the sensual dance; the fiendish scalp song, aw-oh, aw-oh, in mockery of shrieking victims; the warriors' change, he-uh, he-uh, in the hideous war dance with brandishing tomahawks and spears; the practical labor of the cornfield; the feasting from kettles crusted with former banquets.  It is no idealized myth of romance; only naked truth with a dash of dramatic interest in the scenes that marked the gradual retreat of the red men before the advancing hosts of whites.
 

     The brown hands of the squaws and their daughters built the double row of huts and wigwams, wove the mats of grass upon which their lordly braves reclined, dressed the skins of deer and buffalo, and toiled over the cornfields.  To woman also fell the lot of "blessing" the corn after planting; and on a dark night when sleep hung over the village some "Laughing Water," unclad and unabashed, stole form her lodge to walk around the cornfield -

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And thus her footprints marked a charmed line over which neither insect nor worm was supposed to creep, thereby insuring a good crop - eloquent proof that in our ancient agriculture there was at least more poetry if less overalls than in our modern art.
     Madam of the Indian home led the busy life within the vilalge while her lord and maser went hunting and fishing.  Nor did she complain; rather was it her pride to labor thus for him who provided meat an clothed her in fur by the chase, or defended their home against their enemies.
     So she went on devotedly pounding the corn into flour, and baking the dough on ashes, and serving it for bread.  She rose to banquet heights with a boiled dinner of corn, pumpkins, beans, chestnuts and meat, sweetened with maple sugar, and all cooked together in one pot, with its deposits and incrustations from previous banquets.  There was one merciful feature about it: they had only two meals a day.  The menu was varied with fish, game, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, cucumbers, squash, melons, roots, fruits and berries - not bad for light housekeeping with one pot.
     Madam's accomplishments did not stop there.  With thread from the rind of the wild hemp and nettles she wove the feathers of turkeys and geese into blankets.  She also made blankets of beaver and coon skin, and shirts and petticoats, leggings and moccasins of deer and bear skin, the fur being worn next to the body in winter, and outside in summer.  Sometimes the fur was scraped off with rib bones of the elk and buffalo.
     So in the peaceful days the Indian life lolled along; some easy tramping over mossy trails, some drifting in canoes, some village handiwork, and much squatting around on blankets, with the ever-present pipe of uppowoc, the while many voices filled the camp; for

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