siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL. LIFE 51
stretched full length upon the ground, then standing erect and motionless ; then
dropping suddenly to the ground, and crawling off at an acute angle to the
right or left to get behind a certain tree or log, here and there stopping and
then again
slowly raising his head just enough to look over the top of the grass ;
hidden until he reached the desired tree ; with intense mingled cui'iosity and
excitement, when hidden from my view in the grass, did I seek to follow him
in his course with my eyes. Oft I would .see a little dark spot not larger than
my fist just above the top of the grass, which slowly grew larger and larger
until I discovered it was his [seemingly] motionless head; and had I not known
he was there somewhere I would not have suspected it was a human head or
the head of anything else; and as I kept my eyes upon it, I noticed it slowly
getting smaller until it gradually disappeared ; and when he reached the tree,
he then observed the same caution, slowly rising until he stood erect and close
to the body of the tree, then slowly and cautiously peeping around it, first on
the right, then on the left ; and when, at this juncture, I have turned my eyes
from him, but momentarily as I thought, to the point where I thought the game
must be, being also eager to satisfy my excited curiosity as to the kind of animal
he was endeavoring to shoot, yet, when I looked to the spot where I had just
seen him—lo ! he was not there ; and while wondering to what point of the
compass he had so suddenly disappeared unobserved, and vainly looking to find
his mysterious whereabouts. I would be startled by the sharp crack of his rifle
in a different direction from that in which I was looking for him, and in turning
my eye would see him slowly rising out of the grass at a point a hundred
yards distant from where I had last seen him."
It was truly wonderful with what ease and certainty the Choctaw hunter
and warrior made his way through the dense forests of his country to any
point he wished to go, near or distant. But give him the direction, [and
that] was all he desired ; with an unerriug certainty, though never having
been in that part of the country before, he would go over hill and valley,
through thickets and canebrakes to the desired point, that seemed incredible.
I have known the little Choctaw boys, in their juvenile excursions with their
bows and arrows and blow-guns to wander miles away from their homes, this
way and that through the woods, and return home at night, without a thought
or fear of getting lost; nor did their parents have any uneasiness in regard
to their wanderings. It is a universal characteristic of the Indian, when
traveling in an unknown country, to let nothing pass unnoticed. His watchful
eye marks every distinguishing feature of the surroundings—a peculiarly lean-
ing or fallen tree, stump or bush, rock or hill, creek or branch, he will recognize
years afterwards, and use them as land marks, in going again through
the same country. Thus the Indian hunter was enabled to go into a distant
forest, where he never before had been, pitch his camp, leave it and hunt
all day—wandering this way and that over hills and through jungles for
miles away, and return to his camp at the close of the day with that apparent
ease and unerring certainty, that baffled all. the ingenuity of the white man
and appeared to him as bordering on the miraculous. Ask any Indian for
directions to a place, near or distant, and he merely points in the direction
you should go, regarding that as sufficient information for any one of common
seuse.°'
The Choctaw hunter was famous as a strategist when hunting alone in the
woods ; and was such an expert in the art of exactly imitating the cries of the
various animals of the forests, that he would deceive the ear of the most
" Cusbman, Hist. Choc, Chick, and Natchez Indians, pp. 180-181.
MJbid., p. 182.