But they knew there would be
forest and Indians. Tales enough had been told of both!
What has to be imaged is a forest the size of Virginia. Here and there,
chiefly upon river banks, show small Indian clearings. Here and there are
natural meadows, and toward the salt water great marshes, the home of
waterfowl. But all these are little or naught in the whole, faint
adornments sewed upon a shaggy garment, green in summer, flame-hued in
autumn, brown in winter, green and flower-colored in the spring. Nor was
the forest to any appreciable extent like much Virginian forest of today,
second growth, invaded, hewed down, and renewed, to hear again the sound of
the axe, set afire by a thousand accidents, burning upon its own funeral
pyres, all its primeval glory withered. The forest of old Virginia was
jocund and powerful, eternally young and eternally old. The forest was
Despot in the land--was Emperor and Pope.
With the forest went the Indian. They had a pact together. The Indians
hacked out space for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, their maize
and bean fields and tobacco patches. They took saplings for poles and bark
to cover the huts and wood for fires. The forest gave canoe and bow and
arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum that was beaten
at feasts. It furnished trees serviceable for shelter when the foe was
stalked. It was their wall and roof, their habitat. It was one of the Four
Friends of the Indians--the Ground, the Waters, the Sky, the Forest.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29