Like all his mates, he was so short and thick that he seemed to be about as broad as he was long. His skin was not copper-colored like that of most other Indians, but black. His face was broad and round, his lips thick and pouting, and his nose wide and flat. His long coarse hair, all tangled and matted, dangled around his high cheek-bones and above his naked shoulders, like the shaggy mane of a Canadian pony, and half hid his coarse, brutal features: a pair of small, round, dull eyes, like leaden bullets, made the treacherous expression that slept in every line of his features seem ten-fold more revolting.
His wigwam, or lodge, was nothing but a rude screen of bushes or skins to break the force of the wind. You would not think it very nice or comfortable, but he did, and could sleep just as well there, or on the ground beside a large stone, or behind the stump of a fallen tree as you do on the softest feathers. But he never slept two nights in the same place, for fear of being discovered by an enemy and murdered.
It is a hard and cheerless life which those little Indian children lead, as you can easily see, but the life of this little Indian was especially so; for his father and mother had both been murdered, and he had no friends to care for him any more kindly than they would care for a dog; and even the _Hias Tyee_, or Big Chief of the tribe, whose duty it was to see that this little waif on the stormy sea of Indian life was provided for, thought only to get some advantage out of him; and so, when he saw a white man camping one day on the shores of the lake, he brought down the boy and offered to sell him for ten dollars. It proved to be a kind, good-hearted man, who saw that the little fellow was friendless and forlorn, and so the bargain was soon closed, and he became servant to the “pale-face” till he was twenty-one years old, on condition of receiving his food and clothing.
On reaching home, the first thing, of course, was to clip off his dangling locks, give him a thorough scrubbing with soap and brush, and cover his black nakedness with decent clothing.
That afternoon, when the pigs were fed, he was found with his nose in the trough eating sour milk with the animals as if he had been one of them. At night nothing could persuade him to sleep in a room or on a bed; and after dark, when the family had retired to rest, he stole out of the house as slyly as a cat, and hid himself away in the tall weeds beside the fence. Every night for many weeks he did the same, and was so fearful of being murdered in his sleep that he changed his nest every night, never daring to sleep twice in the same spot.