Skin Bottom Covering
If the cache pit was a small one, we covered the bottom with a circular piece of skin, cut to fit the pit bottom, and laid it directly on the grass matting that covered the willow floor; but if the cache pit was a large one, we fitted into the bottom the skin cover of a bull boat, with the willow frame removed.
Storing the Cache Pit
The cache pit was now ready to be stored.
My mother and I—and by “my mother” I mean always one of my two mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead—fetched an old tent cover from the earth lodge, and laid it by the cache pit so that one end of the cover hung down the pit’s mouth. Upon this tent cover we emptied a big pile of shelled ripe corn, fetched in baskets from the bull boats in which it had been temporarily stored inside the lodge. We also fetched many strings of braided corn, and laid them on one side of the tent cover. Lastly, we fetched some strings of dried squash and laid them on the tent cover.
Of dried squash, I fetched but one string at a time, doubled and folded over my left arm. A string of dried squash, as I have said, was always seven Indian fathoms long; and I have described an Indian fathom as the distance from the tips of the fingers of one hand to the tips of the fingers of the other, with both hands outstretched at either side. As these measurements were made by the women workers, an Indian fathom averaged about five and a half feet in length. A string of dried squash, seven Indian fathoms in length, we knew by experience to be just about the weight that a woman could conveniently carry. A string eight fathoms long would be too heavy; and one six fathoms long would be rather short.
Figure 28
Plan of cache in horizontal section: A, floor ready for storing; B, the first series of braided strings; C, loose corn; D, first squash string.
In vertical section: E, the first series of braided strings of corn; F, adding loose corn; G, the first squash string; H, loose corn filled in around squash.