SUMAC HUNTING.
BY J. ESTEN COOKE.
Anybody visiting the valley of Virginia in the autumn will be sure to notice, after sunset, all along the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, little glimmering lights like stars. These are the fires in front of the small tents of the sumac hunters, who, after gathering sumac all day long, are laughing and talking with their wives and children as they eat their suppers before lying down to sleep.
Sumac is a very pretty plant or shrub which grows a few feet high only, and has beautiful blood-red leaves springing from a delicate shoot, or bough. The stalk is smooth, and the leaves are almond-shaped, only more pointed. On the top of the plant and its larger boughs grow bunches of red berries in the shape of grape bunches; and the leaves and berries are of such a deep, rich crimson in the late autumn that they sometimes make the slopes of the hills appear as if they were on fire. If any little girl would like to dress the vases on the parlor mantelpiece prettily, she could not do better than collect a handful of these delicate tendrils with their scarlet leaves, and use them as a background to the lovely little autumn flowers—late primroses, stars-of-Bethlehem, wild honeysuckles, and fringed ferns—which grow in the woods and fields at this time of the year.
But the honest country people who take so much pains about collecting sumac are not thinking about dressing vases with it. They gather it to sell, and are paid from one cent to a cent and a half a pound for it at the sumac mills. This may not seem much, but then the ocean is made up of drops, and with poor people a little money goes a long way. As little children can pull sumac just as well as grown people, a whole family may gather in a day several dollars' worth.
It is used for dyeing, and is said to be better for that purpose than anything else to color fair leather and certain other fabrics. Great quantities of it are employed in printing calicoes in rich patterns, and the dresses worn by ladies and girls often owe their bright colors to the leaves of the sumac. The way in which it is collected and prepared for use is very simple. As soon as the leaves turn red, which is toward the end of summer, the sumac hunters begin their work. They scatter through the fields, or along the sides of the mountain, and break off the twigs on which the leaves are growing; for these twigs do not make the leaves less valuable. Then, when they have collected an armful, they put it in a pile or into bags, and as night comes on the whole is taken to one spot, from which it is hauled home in wagons. Here it is laid on the floor of the barn or any out-house, in the shade, so that it may dry very gradually, and keep the juices which afford the coloring matter. When this process of drying is gone through with, and the leaves are in a proper state, it is loaded on carts or wagons, in bags, and taken to the sumac mills, where it is weighed, and paid for by the owner of the mills at the rate, as I have said, of from one cent to a cent and a half a pound. The largest mills in Virginia, where the finest sumac grows—or at least a very fine article—are at Richmond; but at Winchester, in the lower part of the Shenandoah Valley, toward the Potomac, there is a big mill, where great quantities are purchased, and prepared for the use of the dyers. The leaves and small twigs are pounded and reduced to a fine dust, and then it is ready to be sent away. When it reaches the manufactories where it is to be used as a dye for leather, calico, etc., it is mixed with what are called mordants, certain substances that make it bite in, as the word means, and take fast hold of the material to be dyed; and then there is the pretty calico with its bright colors, which can not be washed out.
It is only of late years that much attention has been paid to it in Virginia. People thought more about raising corn and wheat than of gathering sumac; but in twenty years they have learned a great deal, and now begin to understand that "every little helps," and that if they can go with their wives and children and pull sumac, and then sell it, they can take their money and buy sugar and coffee, and perhaps some of the very calico for their little girls' dresses which the red leaves of the sumac make so pretty.
The children like the "camping out" on the mountain in the pleasant summer and fall nights very much. It is a sort of frolic, and it is a very good thing to mix up pleasure with work: it makes the work much easier. The tents are very simple little affairs—only a breadth of canvas stretched across a ridge-pole, like the "comb" of a house, held up by forked sticks set in the ground. In this are spread what in Virginia are called "pine tags," that is, the tassels, or needles, of the pine-trees, which are dry and brown, and by spreading a blanket or old comforter on these you have an excellent soft bed. In front of the tent a fire is built to cook by, and by means of forked sticks a pot can be hung above the fire for making soup, boiling meat, etc. By this fire, as I have told you, the sumac hunters gather in the evening, after work, and laugh and talk and sing, and eat their suppers; or perhaps some one of them can play the fiddle, and he strikes up a dancing tune, and the girls and boys dance on the grass, and laugh and enjoy themselves much more than if they were in fine drawing-rooms. After a while the long day's work makes them sleepy, and they lie down on the fresh pine tags in the tent, and go to sleep—to be up at daylight, and once more at work hunting and gathering their sumac.