Marooned in the Forest: The Story of a Primitive Fight for Life

by A. Hyatt Verrill

But of far greater importance to me than the soap itself was the fact that in making it I learned how to remove the hair or fur from hides both rapidly and easily. The first batch of soap which I made was prepared with deer’s tallow, but I could ill afford to use this material for such a purpose. I carefully gathered together all the fat which I could obtain from the hares, partridges, and other game which I secured. In addition I saved all the remnants of meat from my meals, as well as the bones, all of which I boiled together with the lye-water. Among the other odds and ends were small pieces of skin, such as the feet of the hares, etc., and after the mass had boiled thoroughly I strained off the clear, liquid soap. While doing this I discovered that every sign of hair had been removed from the pieces of skin and this fact led me to experiment, and I soon found that by soaking hides in a mixture of water and wood-ashes I could remove all the hair or fur without injuring the skin in the least. Moreover, the action of the potash removed the grease from the skin and left it clean and I was thus saved the tedious process of scraping the hides with my knife. Of course the first few trials of this method were something of a failure, for the lye was too strong and the skins were weak, rotten, and worthless, but by gradually decreasing the quantity of ashes and the length of time the skins were allowed to soak I found that the hair could be loosened so it was easily rubbed off without affecting the toughness of the skin itself.

Now that I had learned how to remove the hair from the skins, I was anxious to devise a method of tanning them without cutting them up as I had been obliged to do hitherto. My only means of tanning was to soak the pieces of hide in the iron pot. But the pot was small and it was needed for many other purposes. I could not use it while the skins were soaking, and I was obliged to cleanse it most carefully after the tanning, yet there was no other receptacle which would serve and I had no means of making any. I had already thought of hollowing out a log to form a trough, but after several hours’ work which resulted only in a cavity hardly large enough to tan a chipmunk’s skin, I gave up in despair.

Birch bark seemed to offer the only solution, but I found that pieces of bark of sufficient size for my purpose were always full of holes and cracks. I pondered over the matter for a long time before I thought of making a vat, or tank, after the manner of a birch-bark canoe. I had often used Indian canoes and knew, in a general way, how the pieces of bark were sewed together and rendered water-tight by means of pitch and gum. While I had too little confidence in my skill to attempt building a canoe, yet I decided it was quite possible to follow out similar methods and make a good-sized tank or basin.

My first step was to construct an oval frame about three feet in length by a foot and a half wide, which I formed from light birch withes. To this I lashed other withes, in the manner of the ribs to a canoe, and then by weaving small branches in and out and lashing them to the ribs I at last produced a sort of basket-like affair without any square corners or straight lines. This form was not intentional on my part, but was the result of necessity. As this turned out, it was fortunate, for I ultimately discovered that to make a good, tight joint at a sharp corner or a right angle was exceedingly difficult. The framework being completed, I placed it upon a large sheet of bark and by dint of a great deal of work and many trials I drew the bark tightly over the frame and secured it firmly to the edges with strips of moosewood bark and hemlock roots. Other kinds of bark were then secured over the frame until the whole was covered, and then came the most difficult work of all, which was to sew the overlapping edges of the various pieces of bark together. Despite every care, I found that holes made by my file-awl would tear out when I drew the root-threads tight, and it was not until I hit upon the plan of burning holes through the bark with the hot awl that I met with any success.

But practice makes perfect, even when one labors with primitive tools in the heart of the wilderness, and before I had half finished with my work I learned to bore holes with a deer’s-horn awl and to run the roots at an angle, or crisscross, from hole to hole, so that the strain did not come with the grain of the bark. It was slow, tedious work even then, however, and several days’ steady labor was required before the last seam was closed.

Rude and uncouth as was this great, bathtub-like affair, I was greatly pleased at my handiwork and I was in a great hurry to patch up the seams and holes with pitch and to try it.

There was an abundance of pitch and gum to be had with little trouble, and I gathered a great quantity of it. This I melted and smeared over the seams of the bark, and when at last I had daubed every crack, seam, and knot-hole with the sticky mess I felt that I had successfully accomplished a great undertaking.

The birch-bark tub held water, only leaking slightly in a few spots, which were readily closed up by daubing on more pitch, and I at once started in to prepare enough tanning liquor to fill it. Then I almost undid all my hard work by my own stupidity, for as soon as the first potful of liquor was ready I poured it into the bark tub and the hot liquor softened the pitch and the tan ran out over the floor.

Fortunately it opened up only one seam, and this I soon repaired, but it served to teach me a lesson, and thereafter I cooled each lot of liquor by placing it outside in the intensely cold air before pouring it into the vat.

It must not be supposed that all this was accomplished in a day or in several days. I was obliged to attend to my traps, hunt for game, cook my meals, cut and gather fire-wood, and do many other necessary things meanwhile, and, moreover, I found that a great deal of time was required to gather the oak and sumach bark. As I could only boil a small quantity of bark at one time and as I was obliged to use my pot for other purposes betweentimes, the work progressed very slowly, and fully two weeks elapsed from the time I finished the birch-bark tub until I had filled it with sufficient liquor to tan a large skin.