We are told that all matter belongs to one of three kingdoms--the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms. From two of these three divisions we obtain most of our food. Food may be divided into two classes then--animal food and vegetable food. In animal food we have the meat of wild animals and of domestic animals. In early days, when the number of people was small, the supply of wild animals was large. A great part of the food in those days was obtained by hunting and fishing. To-day most of the meat comes from domestic animals, so that the keeping of herds and flocks is one of the great industries of the time. Fish are still important in our lists of foods, but the flesh of wild animals is less and less used for meat.
Three hundred years ago the Indians had this country to themselves. They were few in number and were scattered over a vast territory. The forests abounded in wild game and the lakes and rivers were filled with fish. Love of hunting and fishing held the first place in the pleasures of the red man. The hunting grounds extended far and wide in every direction. Each tribe had its own hunting and fishing grounds, and it was considered an act of war for any tribe of Indians to encroach upon the territory of other tribes.
"Such places as they chose for their abode," says Hubbard's History, "were usually at the falls of great rivers, or near the seaside, where was any convenience for catching such fish as every summer and winter used to come up the coast. At such times they used, like good fellows, to make all common, and then those who had entertained their neighbors at the seaside expected the like kindness from them again up higher in the country."
The kinds of wild animals that the Indians hunted were very numerous. One man describes the appearance of an Indian's "room of skins." He says: "There they showed me many hides and horns, both beasts of chase of the stinking foot--such as roes, foxes, jackals, wolves, wildcats, raccoons, porcupines, skunks, muskrats, squirrels, and sables--and beasts of chase of the sweet foot--buck, red deer, reindeer, moose, bear, beaver, otter, hare, and martin." Captain John Smith tells of the fowl that the red men hunted. He mentions eagles, hawks, cranes, geese, ducks, sheldrakes, teal, gulls, and turkeys.