The digging and storing of a cache pit was women’s work. For digging the pit, a short handled hoe was used; of iron, in my day; of bone, I have heard, in olden times.
I have dug more than one cache pit myself. I began by digging the round mouth, dragging the loosened earth away with my hoe. As the pit grew in depth, the excavated earth was carried off in a wooden bowl. I stood in the pit with the bowl at my feet and labored with my hoe, raking the earth into the bowl. When it was full, I handed the bowl to my mother, who bore it away and emptied it.
It took me two days and a good part of a third to dig a cache pit, my mother helping me to carry off the dirt; such a cache pit, I mean, as we used in my father’s family, and which, as I have said, was large enough for a bull boat cover to be fitted into the bottom.
A trench for the puncheon cover of the mouth was the very last part of the cache pit to be dug; but I will describe the use of this trench a little farther on.
Grass for Lining
When the cache pit was all dug, it had next to be lined with grass. The grass used for this purpose, and for closing the mouth of the cache pit, was the long bluish kind that grows near springs and water courses on this reservation; it grows about three feet high. In the fall, this kind of grass becomes dry at the top, but is still green down near the roots; and we then cut it with hoes and packed it in bundles, to the village.
This bluish grass was the only kind used for lining a cache pit. We knew by repeated trials that other kinds of grass would mold, and did not keep well.
Grass Bundles
I remember, one time, I went out with my mother to cut grass. I took a pony along to pack our loads home. I loaded the pony with four bundles of grass, two on each side, bound to the saddle. A bundle was about four feet long, and from two and a half to three feet thick, pressed tight together. One bundle made a load for a woman.