"I wish I were a freedman: I should soon be off to the Lake myself!
I am sick of working for the Company. I did not mind it when they set
me to haul meat from the hunters, or to trap furs for them, but now
they make me saw wood, or help the blacksmith at his dirty forge:
what has a 'Tene Jua' to do with such things as these?"
"And I am sick of starving!" said another. "This is the third winter
that _something_ has failed us,--first the rabbits, then the
fish ran short; and now we hear that the deer are gone into a new
track, and there is not a sign of one for ten miles round the Fort.
And the meat is so low" added the last speaker, "that the 'big
Master' says he has but fifty pounds of dried meat in the store, and
if Indians don't come in by Sunday, we are to be sent off to hunt for
ourselves and the wives and children are to go to Little Lake where
they may live on fish."
"We have plenty of fish, it is true," said Accomba; "we dried a good
number last Fall, besides having one net in the lake all the winter;
but I would not leave the Company, Peter, if I were you,--you are
better off here, man, in spite of your 'starving times!' You _do_ get
your game every day, come what may, and a taste of flour every week, and
a little barley and potatoes. I call that living like a 'big master.'"
"I had rather be a free man and hunt for myself," put in another
speaker; "the meat does not taste half so good when another hand than
your own has killed it; and as for flour and barley and potatoes,
well, our forefathers got on well enough without them before the
white man came into our country, I suppose we should learn to do
without them again? For my part, I like a roe cake as well as any
white man's bread.
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