“Well, sheep hides were never very much valued among our people,” replied Alex. “In the mountain tribes below here the women used to make very white, soft leather for their dresses out of sheep hides. The hair is coarse and brittle, however, and although it will do for a little while as a bed, I’m afraid you young gentlemen will throw away the hides when you finish the trip.”
“Well, all right,” said John. “We won’t throw them away just yet. Let’s spread them out and tan them. What’s the best way to do that?”
“The Injuns always stake out a hide, on the ground or on a frame, flesh side up,” said Alex. “Then they take one of their little scrapers and pare all the meat off. That’s the main thing, and that is the slowest work. When you get down to the real hide, it soon dries out and doesn’t spoil. You can tan a light hide with softsoap, or salt and alum. Indeed, the Injuns had nothing of that sort in their tanning—they’d scrape a hide and dry it, then spread some brains on it, work in the brains and dry it and rub it, and last of all, smoke it. In that way they got their hides very soft, and after they were smoked they would always work soft in case they got wet, which isn’t the case with white man’s leather, which is tanned by means of acids and things of that kind.”
“I have tanned little squirrel hides, and ground-hog hides, and wildcat skins,” said Rob, “many a time. It isn’t any trouble if you once get the meat all scraped off. That seems to be what spoils a hide.”
“In keeping all our valuable furs,” said Alex, “we never touch them with salt or alum. We just stretch them flesh side out, and let them dry in the shade, not close to a fire. This keeps the life all in the fur. Alum makes the hair brittle and takes away the luster. For a big bear hide, if I were far back in the mountains, I would put lots of salt on it and fold it up, and let it stay away for a day. Then I would unroll it and drain it off, and salt it all over again; tamp salt down into the ears, nose, eyes, and feet, then roll it up again and tie it tight, with the fur side out. Bear hides will keep all right that way if you haven’t sunshine enough to dry them. The best way to keep a hide, though, is simply to scrape it clean and dry it in the sun, and after that fold it. It will never spoil then.”
“Alex,” ventured Moise, laughing, “you’ll talk just like my old woman about tan hides. Those business is not for mans.”
“That’s true,” said Alex, smiling. “In the old times, when we had buffalo, the women always tanned the hides. Hard work enough it was, too, with so heavy and coarse a hide. Now they tan the moose hides. I’ll show you, young gentlemen, lower down this river near the camping places on the shore spruce-trees cut into three-cornered shape. You might not know what that was for. It was done so that the women could rub their moose hides around these angles and corners while they were making them soft. They make fine moose leather, too—although I suppose we’d have to wait a good while before we could get Moise to tan one in that way!”
“What makes them use brains in tanning the hide?” asked Jesse.
“Only for the grease there is in them,” said Alex. “It takes some sort of grease to soften up a hide after it has been dried. The Injuns always said they could tan a hide with the brains of the animal. Sometimes in tanning a buffalo hide, however, they would have marrow and grease and scraps thrown into a kettle with the brains. I think the main secret of the Injun tanning was the amount of hard work put in on rubbing the hide. That breaks up the fiber and makes it soft.
“But now, Moise,” resumed Alex, getting up and filling his pipe, “I think it is about time we went down and had a look at those rapids below the camp. We’ve got to get through there somehow before long.”