If Eagle Heart's sister was a merry little maid she might be called Laughing Water. Isn't that a pretty name? Laughing Water had lessons to learn too. She had to help mother take the skins from the wild animals the hunters had brought home, and cut up and cook the meat. She had to help scrape the hair from deer skins with sharp clam shells, and rub and pull the skin until it was as soft as a kid glove. A needle she made of a fish bone; the thread of the leg tendons of the deer. Her thread was like our violin strings. It was very strong. Then she sewed the skins into shirts and leggings and moccasins and robes. She embroidered moccasins and belts with little shells, after boring holes through them; and she colored porcupine quills and pushed them in patterns through the soft yellow skin. She colored long eagle feathers and made a warrior head-dress for her father. She made herself necklaces of shells.
In the summer, the Indian women and girls dug holes in the fields, with pointed sticks or clam shells, and planted corn and beans, pumpkins and tobacco. Laughing Water had to gather the ripe corn, shell it, boil the grains in clay pots, dry them and pound them to meal in wooden bowls. She shifted the meal through a sieve she made of fine, tough grass. She wove baskets of reeds and grasses. If she had time she wove colored figures and lines in her pretty baskets. She made clay cooking pots and water jars, and she painted figures on them. One of the nicest things she did was to make candy. She made it by boiling the sweet sap of the maple tree. For her father, Laughing Water dried the broad tobacco leaves. He put these in a pipe with a stone bowl and a hollow reed stem, and smoked them.
In the evening the whole tribe sat around a big fire under the maple trees. The tired hunters smoked and talked of the hunt, or of battles. Old men and women told stories of long ago. The Indians had no books, but their old stories were not lost. Grandfathers and grandmothers told these hero tales to the children, and the children remembered the stories and told them to their grandchildren. Some day you must read "Hiawatha" and learn more about how the first American boy lived.
Eagle Heart and Laughing Water thought their home would always be as it was then. They did not know that little children with pale faces were coming to live among them.
See Plate "Natives of North America," Vol. I, page 60. Also see Indians, page 921; Aztec, page 150; Pueblos, page 1559. Also in Index under Indian see numerous references.
