is a buffalo that he sees. In this respect the Indians are different from
the white people; they are foolish, and when they travel they go on the
ridges between the streams, because the road is level, and the going easy.
But when they travel in this way everyone can see them from a long way off,
and can hide in the path, and when they approach can shoot at them and kill
them. The white people think that because they cannot see Indians, there
are none about; and this belief has caused many white people to be killed."

As I walked behind my uncle, following him over the prairie, I tried to
watch him, and to imitate everything that he did. If he stopped, I stopped;
if he bent down his head, and went stooping for a little way, I also
stooped, and followed him; when he got down to creep, I, too, crept, so as
to be out of sight.

That day, as the sun fell toward the west, my uncle went down to the river,
and looked along the bank and the mud-bars, trying to learn whether any
animals had been to the water; and when he saw tracks he pointed them out
to me. "This," he said, "is the track of a deer. You see that it has been
going slowly. It is feeding, because it does not go straight ahead, but
goes now in one direction, and then in another, and back a little, not
seeming to have any purpose in its wandering about, and here," showing me a
place where a plant had been bitten off, "is where it was eating. If we
follow along, soon we will see its tracks in the mud by the river." It was
as he had said, and soon, in a little sand-bar, we saw the place where the
animal had stopped. "You see," he said, "this was a big deer; here are his
tracks; here he stopped at the edge of the water to drink; and then he went
on across the river, for there are no tracks leading back to the bank. You
will notice that he was walking; he was not frightened; he did not see nor
smell any enemies."