The boys, who run everywhere, have brought good news to the camp. "The June berries are ripe in the forest," they say. So the mothers are starting with children and bags for the berry picking.
It is not yet sunrise; but it is the custom of the Indians to rise early. The men, with bows and arrows, knives and spears, have already gone away to their daily business—the hunt.
The older lads are with their fathers, and the little boys have begun a long summer's day of shouting, swimming, mud throwing, and mischief. Among them is White Cloud's brother, a sturdy boy of four years.
Here and there are old men sitting in front of their lodges and smoking their long pipes. Inside, the grandmothers are busy preparing food and dressing skins for clothing.
Most of the women, like Good Bird, carry their babies and berry sacks upon their backs; but some of them have large dogs trained as burden carriers.
Here comes Two Joys, the mother of twins. She is followed by a pair of dogs, each dragging a strapping brown baby boy.
One by one, the women and girls wade the streams and climb the hills, following the trail that leads to the forest. There they separate, each to make her own choice of bushes.
White Cloud's mother chooses a thicket where the berries are large and abundant. She fastens her baby's cradle to the top of a low tree. The wind swings the cradle, and, like the Mother Goose baby, the Indian papoose rocks on the tree top. Let us hope that the bough will not break.
The birds chirp and sing in the branches. A squirrel comes near to see what strange object is hanging in his tree. The baby wakes and cries with fright, and the squirrel scampers away.
Good Bird is filling her bags of woven grass with purple berries. She does not pick them as we do, but breaks off long branches loaded with fruit. Then, with a heavy stick, she beats the branch and the berries fall on a large skin that is spread on the ground.