[Footnote 19: White Fisher. The fisher is a small furred animal
resembling the mustela.]
_28th_. I have had an interview to-day with Ka-ba-konse (Little Hawk),
brother of the murdered Strong Sky.
It does not seem possible to obtain much information respecting their
secret beliefs and superstitions direct from the Indians. The attempts I
have made thus far have, at least, been unsuccessful, partly, perhaps,
because the topic was not properly apprehended by them, or by my
ordinary office interpreter, who, I find, is soon run a-muck by anything
but the plainest and most ordinary line of inquiry. A man of the Indian
frontiers, who has lived all his life to eat and drink, to buy and sell,
and has grown old in this devotion to the means necessary to secure the
material necessaries of life is not easily roused up to intellectual
ardor. I find this to be the case with my present interpreter, and he
is, perhaps, not inferior to the general run of paid interpreters. But
as I find, in my intercourse, the growing difficulties of verbal
communication with the Indians on topics at all out of the ordinary
routine of business, I begin to feel less surprised at the numerous
misapprehensions of the actual character, manners, and customs of the
Indians, which are found in books.
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