"Why," said she, with an effort that evidently cost her a struggle,
"my people make and barter them at the Fort at the north-west for
things of more use. Indians have no money."
It was the first time I had heard so distinct an avowal of her
American origin, and as I saw it brought the colour to her face, I
thought I had discovered a clue to her natural pride, or, more
properly, her sense of the injustice of the world, which is too apt to
look down upon this mixed race with open or ill-concealed contempt.
The scurvey opens old sores, and makes them bleed afresh, and an
unfeeling fellow does the same. Whatever else I may be, I am not that
man, thank fortune. Indeed, I am rather a dab at dressin' bodily ones,
and I won't turn my back in that line, with some simples I know of, on
any doctor that ever trod in shoe-leather, with all his compounds,
phials, and stipties.
In a gineral way, they know just as much about their business as a
donkey does of music, and yet both of them practise all day. They
don't make no improvements. They are like the birds of the air, and
the beasts of the forest. Swallows build their nests year after year
and generation after generation in the identical same fashion, and
moose winter after winter, and century after century, always follow in
each other's tracks. They consider it safer, it ain't so laborious,
and the crust of the snow don't hurt their shins.
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