Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

74 страница из 136

The redman’s medicine was an invigorating tonic for my father’s frayed spirits. It seemed like God had sent that Indian just at the psychological moment — when my father’s depressed spirits needed bolstering so very much, when an anodyne for his ills was to be had by the blending of two agencies for making leather. Though he had never up to this time regarded it as a commercial agency, my father knew of course that sumac contained tannin. If the Indians could tan their deerskins with it, he reasoned, why couldn’t he mix it with oak bark and tan his calfskins?

I shall always believe that it was something more than blind chance that brought the paths of white man and red man together at that particular spot. Undoubtedly, the Great Spirit was in control. The movements of the Indians up to that time were of course dark, but timed just right. And praise be, there were Indians—amongst them an Indian like Eagle Eye, who could make himself understood. The big break for my father was in the sumac patch close at hand.