The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1935-10-25
NOW COMES INDIAN SUMMER

the united states.
! Chronologically, Indian Summer
should occur between Halloween, on
October 81, and st. Martins Day, No
vember Is. The season, however, is
coy and unreliable; it's advent cannot
be definitely fixed as one fixes that of
feast day When the giants, Sum
mer and Winter, have battled for
supremacy and the latter has fallen
but is ready to resume after either a
long or short count, Indian Summer
is here. Not the warm, golden days of
early October when world series
bleacher fans discard their coats under
the sometimes rather hot rays of
Summer hang over"
Toward the latter part of October,
weeks after we have read the head
line: First Snow on Mount Marcy,
when the Great Lakes Autumn toll of
shipwrecks has grown apace; when
coastguard cutters are busy from Cape
Cod to Diamond Shoals; when violent
rains have swept all northern forests
bare, we give up. Winters right on
u.s." we say despairingly. Gone are
the ideal days of golf, of motoring in
comfort of most out door activities ex-
cept football and hunting. There is
nothing left with kick in it, Chill,
raw winds, dun colored clouds and
scurrying focks of birds add the final
touch. Another Winter will never
lind me here" about 80 per cent of us
mentally resolve.
But hold. There comes a day-a
succession of days, maybe six or even
/ a dozen-after we have settled down
for the Winter, when (around Novem-
Der u a different kind of weather pre-
walls than any experienced during the
Spring, Summer and Autumn. There
! is something mysterious and weird
about it, despite its bland and mellow
glory-half- days, with the sun
shining like an orange red ball
| through an otherwise clear sky end in
rich blood-red sunsets.
Smoke from forest fires" we are
told.
But the Ojibway Indian knows bet
ter It's smoke from the pipe of
Nanahbozhoo," says he.
Just before Nanahbozhoo, the Indian
god, falls asleep for the Winter, like
the farmer or other mere earthly
mortals, he looks over his affairs, the
aborigine explains. Seating himself
on his throne at the North Pole, the
great god of the Ojibways lights up
his pipe-containing enough tobacco,
maybe, to last a week or ten days
and begins looking over the affairs and
transactions of his people for the past
season. The smoke from his pipe that
| floats over all the world causes the
!
gettable sunsets of Indian Summer.
The red men themselves never re-
| ferred to the aftermath of the Summer
and Autumn as Indian Summer. That
was the white mans name for it. To
the Indian it meant period of activ
| ity. When the soft, mellow days came
the Misunderstanding lived since spring
time along the shores of lakes and
rivers, where they fished and planted
Icrops-gathered the last of their
maize and wild rice. Their dried fish
We're packed up. Shares and traps
We're assembled Before the breakup
of good weather the Indians had dis
persed to all parts of the country for
| their Winter trapping.
| The origin of the name, Indian Sum
mer, like the mysterious season itself,
! is vague. Some old American writers
say the white settlers always prepared
| for the final Indian attack when the
good weather of early November came,
| following October storms. The name
Indian Summer" therefore, was APP
| piled to the season and was intended
| to convey the idea of unreliability and
| decetfulness. Through lack of under
standing and suspicion on both Sides
perhaps, few of the Colonists of New
| England had any faith in the Indian
Gather your Indian corn before it
gets down and the heavy rains come"
was an old Indian Summer warming.
Everything is made snug and tight on
the Northern farm in Indian Summer.
The farmer can count on no more such
weather for the balance of the year
/ A good Indian Summer meant a good
corn crop the next year the New Eng
j land farmer believed In the Mohawk
Valley and the back country of New
York and New England, where few
Indian traditions survive, older resi-
dents still believe it,
a man who has observed the GUS
toms and manners of country people,
especially in different parts of the
United States, says that the beautiful
weather of Indian Summer is great
promoter of sectional pride and love
for ones own region. Nature has
blessed the particular section with a
season of rare weather, seems to be
the general belief.
This weather couldn't be equaled
anywhere else a Mohawk Valley man
told the traveller, as he looked pride
fully down upon the historic, silvsry
stream, one Indian Summer day
A Virginia fisherman sat watching
his drying nets on the scented dunes
of Cape Henry a few weeks before
Thanksgiving. Tell me where you
can beat this weather." he demanded
of the visitor with eyes on the sister
lighthouse of Cape Charles.
Frank l.. Stanton, who generally
saw nature with the eyes of Words
worth and had the rare faculty of
using the right word when he did,
wrote:
"mjun Summer suites me, soft
night and Silly day;
And l could keep on dreamin till
| dreamed my life away"
Stanton, however, wrote of the
Georgia Indian Summer that lasts for
| weeks.
Down in the Attakapas of Louisiana,
where the long horned cattle still feed
on the lush grass as in the days of
jackson and Lafitte, a Creole planter
was asked: where do the people en-
JOY the most beautiful Indian Summer
weather." 1t was explained to the
planter that Indian Summer is the
equivalent of st. Martins Summer, the
only name he or his ancestors ever
heard for it. He looked at his inter-
rogator curiously, his blue eyes twink
ling.
why right here, of course" he re-
piled. Indian Summer, as you call it,
! begins in November and last until
April New York Times.