The men, women, and children wear clothes made of skin. They often wear blankets as shawls are worn by white people. Their shoes are made of deerskin and have no soles. They are called moccasins.
In many places the Indians now have schools, and the little Indian boys and girls go to school every day. Our government has sent teachers to teach them. They learn to read and write and count.
But the Indian boys and girls learn a great many things at home. Their fathers tell them about birds and beasts and trees and rivers. And they teach the boys to hunt and fish, and train them up to be brave in war.
The Indian boys and girls have a great many games. The boys play with bows and arrows. They play "blindman's buff," and "hunt the slipper," and handball and football. The girls take part in the football. One of their games is the "stick and ring" game. The ring is made of skin and is sometimes covered with beads. Each boy has a stick, and he throws it at the ring while it is rolling along the ground. The game is to send the stick through the ring. Every boy tries to strike every other boy's stick to stop it from going through the ring.
The Indian boys sometimes play at fighting battles. They form themselves into two armies, and one army fights against the other. They fight with balls of wet clay. Often the battle lasts two or three hours.
Indian girls have dolls, and they dress them and sing them to sleep. They play "house," and often have doll-house moving.
Indian men and boys are fond of swimming, and they are very good swimmers. They are also fond of sailing in their canoes. The canoe is made of the bark of the birch tree. The Indians paddle their canoes. They can make them go very fast.
Many of the Indians now live in houses and have farms the same as white men, and they raise corn and vegetables and fruit. They have horses and cows and sheep as other farmers have. And we may hope that before long the Red Men will live in the same way as white men, and be as well off and as happy.
The Philippine Islands are far away on the other side of the earth, near China. There are a great many of these islands. Most of them are small. But some of them are large islands, and many people live on them. The largest of the islands is called Luzon. The largest town in this island is Manila.
Many tribes of people live in the Philippine Islands. Each tribe has a language of its own.
It is very warm in these islands. So the people need but little clothing. Their houses are not very high. The highest house is only two stories. In some parts they have strange windows in their houses. The panes are not made of glass, as in our houses. They are made of oyster shells. But they are not like our oyster shells. They are very thin--so thin that the light can come through them nearly as well as through glass. The shell is made square, and fits in the window like a pane of glass. Sometimes the sides or walls of the upper stories are made of frames, with oyster shells for panes. The people can slide these walls back, so as to let the cool air into the rooms.
There is one tribe in the islands called the Moro tribe. The people of this tribe have very strange houses. They build their houses in the water near the shore. They build them on the top of long poles. The first stories are high above the water. The people use ladders to go up to them. These houses are built of bamboo.
The bamboo is very useful in the country where it grows. It is a kind of reed, and grows very tall. It has joints like the joints of a corn stalk. It is not solid like a corn stalk, but is hollow inside. It is so thick and strong that the people make houses of it and all kinds of furniture.
The Moro men are good sailors and swimmers. They are also good divers. They dive into the water for pearls and coral. They can stay under the water for two or three minutes at a time. The children also are good swimmers. They spend a great deal of time in the water.
There is another tribe called the Man'gy-ans. These people live in the mountains. They have black hair and flat noses. They are very strong, for they spend most of their time out of doors.
Some months of the year they do not live in houses. They sleep under trees. But other months of the year it rains very much. Then they sleep in houses. Their houses are made of poles with roofs of leaves.
The Mangyan women and girls wear a very strange kind of dress. It is made of cords coiled around their waists. The cords are narrow strips of rattan braided together. Rattan is the stem of a plant which grows to a very great height. It sometimes grows a hundred feet high. It is as thick as a man's wrist, and it is very tough and strong. The people split the rattan into thin strips. With these they make baskets, seats of chairs, walking canes, ropes, and many other things.
The Mangyan men are good hunters. They hunt an animal called the tim'a-rau. It is like a buffalo. They shoot it with bows and arrows.
There are a great many large forests in the Philippines, and there are very fine trees in them. The most useful of the plants or trees is the bamboo. I have already told you about it. The cocoanut palm is also a very useful tree. The nuts give food and drink and oil.
On one of the islands there is a wonderful plant called the pitcher plant. Its leaves are in the shape of pitchers. Some of the pitchers have lids, and are large enough to hold a pint of water.
In the Philippines they raise coffee, bananas, sugar, tobacco, and cotton. One of their most useful plants is the plant from which they get hemp for making ropes and cords. This plant is called "ab'a-ca" by the people in the Philippines, and its hemp is called Manila hemp.
There is a great deal of rice grown in the Philippines. Rice is the food that most of the people live on.
There are buffaloes in the Philippines. The people use them for riding and for carrying loads. They have also deer, goats, and hogs.
In some parts of the islands they have a strange way of fishing. They fill baskets with a kind of mixture in which they put poison. Then they throw the baskets into the water. The fish become stupid after eating the poison. Very soon they rise to the top of the water, where the people catch them.
Manila is a large town with strong walls and a deep moat, or ditch, around it. There are eight gates in the wall and bridges across the moat.
The men in Manila wear trousers and shirts; but they wear the shirts outside. The women wear skirts with long trains, and waists with very full and flowing sleeves. They wear scarfs or handkerchiefs around their necks, with two of the corners hanging down their backs. They never wear hats.
In a few of the islands there are schools, and the children learn to read and write; but in many other parts there are neither schools nor churches. As the islands now belong to the United States, there will soon be many more schools, and the children will be able to learn everything that is taught in our schools.
Far away in Africa, near where the pygmies live, there is a great river called the Kongo. The land on either side of this river for many miles is called the Kongo Valley.
There are hundreds of miles of great woods in this valley. These woods are not like our woods. They are very thick with vines and plants. There are also a great many kinds of trees.
In the woods are birds with very bright colors. There are birds called sunbirds. Often green, yellow, scarlet, and purple feathers are found on these birds. What a pretty sight it must be to see them flit about in the sun!
There are also many kinds of pretty flowers in the woods. These flowers are as gay in color as the birds.
Many tribes of negroes live in the Kongo Valley. They live in huts made of mats. The mats are made of strong grass. The grass is first twisted into cords. Then the cords are braided into mats.
The people also use mats for their beds; but they do not put the mats on the ground. They tie them to a frame raised a little above the ground.
These negroes also make baskets, bowls, pots, and wooden spoons. The bowls and pots they make out of clay.
It is very warm all the year round in the Kongo Valley. So the people wear very little clothing. They rub their bodies with palm oil.
They have a funny way of wearing their hair. While they are young their hair is braided. Then it is twisted into all sorts of knots and shapes. They do not untwist it, but keep it so always. They think these queer knots and shapes are very pretty.
The women do all the hard work. They cook the food. They do the other housework. They plant the corn and beans.
The men spend a great deal of time in fishing. They also hunt and kill elephants to get their tusks for ivory. There are many elephants in the Kongo Valley. They roam about in large herds. It must be a hard task to kill an elephant!
One of the tribes in the Kongo Valley is called the Bangala tribe. The men are tall and strong and fierce. They are always fighting with other tribes. This makes the other tribes very much afraid of them.
The negroes of this tribe have a strange way of making friends with a white man. They will do him no harm if he is willing to be their "blood brother."
This is the way they make a white man their blood brother. The black man takes a limb of palm tree which has two branches. With one branch in his hand, he falls on the ground before the white man. The white man takes hold of the other branch. Then the black man splits the limb into two parts with his knife.
After this is done, an old man of the tribe comes to the white man and the black man. He puts the white man's arm over the black man's arm. When their arms are together, he makes a small cut in each arm. He makes this cut to draw blood. Then the old man puts salt and the dust of banana leaves into the blood, and rubs both arms together. The black man and the white man are then blood brothers.
These people have also a strange way of taking care of their canoes. When they are not using them, they keep them under water. They say that the canoes will last longer if kept under water.
Perhaps you have heard of the Amazon River. It is the largest river in the world. It is four thousand miles long, and more than fifty miles wide where it flows into the sea. This river is in Brazil. Brazil is far south of us.
There are great forests along the banks of this river. They run back from the river for hundreds of miles. They are the largest forests in the world.
A great many kinds of trees grow in these forests. Some of the trees are very high. Often the trees are covered with vines on which beautiful flowers grow.
Wax-palm trees, breadfruit trees, and rubber trees are found in these forests. Wax is taken from the leaves of the wax palm.
We make rubber from the rubber tree. A cut is made in the side of the tree with a knife. From this cut a white juice flows. This juice is like milk. It is caught in a cup. After a while the juice gets hard. Then it is rubber.
A great many strange animals and birds are found in these forests. There is the sloth, which lives in the trees. It has hooked claws for holding on to the branches. It hangs on to a branch with its back downward. When it goes to sleep, it rolls itself up like a ball. It moves very slowly, and that is why it is called the sloth.
These forests are full of monkeys and parrots. Perhaps you have seen a parrot. I dare say you have not seen more than two or three parrots at one time. But in these forests there are flocks of parrots. They fly from tree to tree, and are very wild.
There are many kinds of them. Some are red, some are green, some are blue, and some are all these colors.
Monkeys chatter and parrots screech. What a noise they must sometimes make!
But besides the parrots and the monkeys, there are humming birds and butterflies. You know that the humming bird is a very small bird, but humming birds are found in these forests no larger than a bee. The butterflies are the most beautiful in the world.
The people who live in these forests are called Indians. They do not often let white men come among them. Their skin is copper color, like the Indians of our country. Their hair is black and straight. They are not as tall as our Indians, but their bodies are finely formed. They have large, full chests. Their hands and feet are small and nicely shaped.
They keep themselves very clean. The men and women, the boys and girls, are all fond of bathing. The first thing they do in the morning is to take a bath in the nearest river.
Strange to say, some of them paint their faces and bodies. They take the juice of a tree which will stain a blue black. They pour this juice on their heads, and let it run in streams down their backs. They also put red and yellow in large round spots on their cheeks and foreheads.
The men braid their hair, and wear it long, down their backs. They part their hair and wear combs. But the women do not part their hair and do not wear combs. They pull the hair out of their eyebrows. They make holes in their ears. In these holes they wear, instead of rings, a little piece of grass with feathers fastened to it.
Their houses are made of logs of wood set in the ground as posts. They put other logs on top of these for a roof. Then they cover these logs with palm leaves. There are no windows, and they use mats for doors.
They sleep in hammocks. These they make of string. They make the string by twisting the leaves of a tree.
They have plenty of pans and pots, both large and small. These pans and pots they make of clay.
First, they soften the clay and knead it. Then they shape it into pots and pans. It is then dried in the sun. When the pots and pans are dry they are put in a hot fire. This makes them hard and strong.
The chief food of these Indians is a kind of flour made from the root of a plant. They also eat fish. A great many fish are found in the rivers. These they catch and eat. They also dry fish and then smoke them over a fire. The smoked fish keep good a long time.
These Indians sail on the rivers in canoes. But their canoes are heavy. They are not light, as the canoes of our Indians are. They are not made of birch bark.
These Indians make an entire canoe out of a single tree. The canoe is made thick so as not to be broken by knocking against snags and rocks.