WIGWAMS, OR WINTER LODGES.
As we step outside again and look about, we can see why this particular spot has been chosen as the campsite. A small lake and several springs are only a short distance away, but the most important reason for camping here at this season is a large grove of sugar maple trees immediately to one side of the camp. March is the proper time to tap the trees for their sap.
The next two or three weeks are spent tapping the trees, and boiling the sap down until maple syrup, and finally only maple sugar is left. This sugar keeps indefinitely and provides a very nourishing as well as a delicious source of food for the entire family. The children are especially fond of it.
It is not a case of all work and no play during this period, for the children, Morning Star, White Fawn, Blackbird, and Little Otter, play games when their tasks are finished, and gambling games are popular with the men and women. Here we see mother and some neighbor women playing the cup and pin game. Each player in turn tosses into the air small cone-shaped cups made of antler tips or bear-toe bones, and tries to catch one or more on a bone pin. The men are enthusiastic gamblers, too, using marked sticks which are thrown and scored somewhat like our own familiar dice games.
When the sugar making is finished, the tribe breaks camp and travels by birch-bark canoe to a new location. The canoes are wonderfully light boats and can be paddled very swiftly. Their light weight makes them relatively easy to carry or portage from one stream to another. Our canoe has eyes painted on the bow and stern. The father explains that these eyes enable the canoe to “see where to go.”
INDIAN CHILDREN AT PLAY (PAINTING BY A. O. TIEMANN).
BIRCH-BARK CANOE.
At the new summer camp we watch our friends build summer lodges. These are rectangular in shape with inverted-V-shaped roofs much like our own houses. The entire lodge is covered with strips of elm or other bark.