Chapter 34. The Birch-bark Vessels
Rolf was sore and stiff for a week afterward; so was Skookum. There were times when Quonab was cold, moody, and silent for days. Then some milder wind would blow in the region of his heart and the bleak ice surface melted into running rills of memory or kindly emanation.
Just before the buck adventure, there had been an unpleasant time of chill and aloofness. It arose over little. Since the frost had come, sealing the waters outside, Quonab would wash his hands in the vessel that was also the bread pan. Rolf had New England ideas of propriety in cooking matters, and finally he forgot the respect due to age and experience. That was one reason why he went out alone that day. Now, with time to think things over, the obvious safeguard would be to have a wash bowl; but where to get it? In those days, tins were scarce and ex-pensive. It was the custom to look in the woods for nearly all the necessaries of life; and, guided by ancient custom and experience, they seldom looked in vain. Rolf had seen, and indeed made, watering troughs, pig troughs, sap troughs, hen troughs, etc., all his life, and he now set to work with the axe and a block of basswood to hew out a trough for a wash bowl. With adequate tools he might have made a good one; but, working with an axe and a stiff arm, the result was a very heavy, crude affair. It would indeed hold water, but it was almost impossible to dip it into the water hole, so that a dipper was needed.
When Quonab saw the plan and the result, he said: “In my father's lodge we had only birch bark. See; I shall make a bowl.” He took from the storehouse a big roll of birch bark, gathered in warm weather (it can scarcely be done in cold), for use in repairing the canoe. Selecting a good part he cut out a square, two feet each way, and put it in the big pot which was full of boiling water. At the same time he soaked with it a bundle of wattap, or long fibrous roots of the white spruce, also gathered before the frost came, with a view to canoe repairs in the spring.
While these were softening in the hot water, he cut a couple of long splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark. Next he made two or three straddle pins or clamps, like clothes pegs, by splitting the ends of some sticks which had a knot at one end.
Now he took out the spruce roots, soft and pliant, and selecting a lot that were about an eighth of an inch in diameter, scraped off the bark and roughness, until he had a bundle of perhaps ten feet of soft, even, white cords.
The bark was laid flat and cut as below.
The rounding of A and B is necessary, for the holes of the sewing would tear the piece off if all were on the same line of grain. Each corner was now folded and doubled on itself (C), then held so with a straddle pin (D). The rim was trimmed so as to be flat where it crossed the fibre of the bark, and arched where it ran along. The pliant rods of birch were bent around this, and using the large awl to make holes, Quonab sewed the rim rods to the bark with an over-lapping stitch that made a smooth finish to the edge, and the birch-bark wash pan was complete. (E.) Much heavier bark can be used if the plan F G be followed, but it is hard to make it water-tight.
So now they had a wash pan and a cause of friction was removed. Rolf found it amusing as well as useful to make other bark vessels of varying sizes for dippers and dunnage. It was work that he could do now while he was resting and recovering and he became expert. After watching a fairly successful attempt at a box to hold fish-hooks and tackle, Quonab said: “In my father's lodge these would bear quill work in colours.”
“That's so,” said Rolf, remembering the birch-bark goods often sold by the Indians. “I wish we had a porcupine now.”