One day John’s father told him not to leave the house, because from the movements of the horses, he knew that Indians were in the woods.  So John seized the first chance and nipped out, and ran to a walnut tree in one of the fields, where he began filling his straw hat with walnuts.  At that very moment he was caught by two Indians, who spilled the nuts, put his hat on his head, and bolted with him.  One of the old women of the tribe had lost her son, and wanted to adopt a boy, and so they adopted Johnny Tanner.  They ran with him till he was out of breath, till they reached the Ohio, where they threw him into a canoe, paddled across, and set off running again.

In ten days’ hard marching they reached the camp, and it was worse than going to a new school, for all the Indians kicked John Tanner about, and “their dance,” he says, “was brisk and cheerful, after the manner of the scalp dance!” Cheerful for John!  He had to lie between the fire and the door of the lodge, and every one who passed gave him a kick.  One old man was particularly cruel.  When Tanner was grown up, he came back to that neighbourhood, and the first thing he asked was, “Where is Manito-o-geezhik?”

“Dead, two months since.”

“It is well that he is dead,” said John Tanner.  But an old female chief, Net-ko-kua, adopted him, and now it began to be fun.  For he was sent to shoot game for the family.  Could anything be more delightful?  His first shot was at pigeons, with a pistol.  The pistol knocked down Tanner; but it also knocked down the pigeon.  He then caught martins—­and measles, which was less entertaining.  Even Indians have measles!  But even hunting is not altogether fun, when you start with no breakfast and have no chance of supper unless you kill game.

The other Red Indian books, especially the cheap ones, don’t tell you that very often the Indians are more than half-starved.  Then some one builds a magic lodge, and prays to the Great Spirit.  Tanner often did this, and he would then dream how the Great Spirit appeared to him as a beautiful young man, and told him where he would find game, and prophesied other events in his life.  It is curious to see a white man taking to the Indian religion, and having exactly the same sort of visions as their red converts described to the Jesuit fathers nearly two hundred years before.

Tanner saw some Indian ghosts, too, when he grew up.  On the bank of the Little Saskawjewun there was a capital camping-place where the Indians never camped.  It was called Jebingneezh-o-shin-naut—­“the place of two Dead Men.”  Two Indians of the same totem had killed each other there.  Now, their totem was that which Tanner bore, the totem of his adopted Indian mother.  The story was that if any man camped there, the ghosts would come out of their graves; and that was just what happened.  Tanner made the experiment; he camped and fell asleep.  “Very soon I saw the two