The women sometimes made cakes of their corn and baked them in the ashes, but, more commonly, they made a sort of porridge of it, or rather soup, for they usually put in a part of some animal, which the husband had brought home from the chase, to enrich and flavor it. The pounded corn and the piece of meat were boiled in the same vessel until they were sufficiently cooked, and then the whole was eaten together.
Mode of Boiling
The mode of boiling this mess was singular enough. They had no vessels which would bear to be exposed directly to the action of fire. They could fashion copper into some very ingenious forms by beating it with smooth stones and grinding it upon rough ones, but they could not make anything like a vessel of it. Nor could they make any pottery that would hold water and stand the fire. But, strange as it may seem, they could fashion a vessel of osiers, coiling them round round in a spiral manner, and sewing each coil to the one below it, in such a manner as to make the work water-tight or nearly so. Any small amount of leakage was probably not of much consequence.
The way in which they boiled their soup in these vessels - it is obvious that it would not answer to put one over the fire - was very curious. It was by setting the vessel on the ground by the side of the fire and putting red-hot stones into it. A single red-hot stone would keep the contents boiling longer than one would suppose, and when one became cool another was put in to take its place. Of course, a great deal of soot and ashes went in with the stone, and white men who, in traveling among the Indians, have been invited to partake of a meal so prepared, have not represented the soup as exhibiting a very attractive appearance when it was ready to be served.
Varied Occupations of the Women
From what has been said it will be seen that all the duties of every kind relating to the home of the family and its surroundings devolved upon the woman - it being her province to relieve her husband of every care except that of hunting, of fishing, and of war. When he brought home the animals that he had killed it was her province to take care both of the skin and of the flesh. The skin she stretched upon a frame and scraped the fleshward side of it with a sharp stone, so as thoroughly to cleanse it, and then made various applications to it and subjected it to a particular course of treatment, which took with them the place of tanning. The effect was to make it soft and plaint and to preserve it from future decay.
The flesh, in summer, they preserved by smoking it. They would dig a hole in the ground and make a fire in it. The fire, being at the bottom of the hole, would, of course, not burn freely, but would only smolder away and make a great deal of smoke. Over and around this hole they would hang the pieces of meat, and then build a sort of inclosure, with mats, around them, in order to confine the smoke. The mats formed, in fact, a species of funnel through which all the smoke must pass as it ascended into the air.
The holes for these fires they dug with their sharpened sticks and clam-shell hoes.
Moccasins
It was the duty of the women to make clothing from the skins after they were cured. The clothing consisted of moccasins for the feet, tight leggins for the legs, and a sort of a double apron, with one flap behind and another before, which was worn both by the women and the men. There was also a looser garment for the shoulders when the weather required it.
All these garments were made with great care, and often a vast deal of labor was bestowed upon them. They were adorned with fringes made of hair dyed of various colors, and with feathers of eagles and of other great birds, and porcupine quills, and with embroidery worked in different colored threads.
The moccasins were made of one piece of skin, the center of the piece forming the sole, and the sides being drawn up and gathered over the foot above. Some of them were finished in a very ornamental manner. The fashion of them was very different according to the purpose for which they were intended. Those made for men, which were, of course, destined to endure the wear and tear of long tramps through the woods on hunting expeditions of military campaigns, were made of very stout leather, and sometimes two or three additional thicknesses were put upon the soles.
Those of the women, which were, of course, to be subjected to much gentler usage, were made lighter and of less substantial material; and there was a kind intended to be worn by young women on the occasion of their marriage, for which a skin was prepared by a long and careful process that made it almost as soft as kid. These bridal moccasins were cut in a peculiar fashion, and they were embroidered with hair of different colors, and gaudily ornamented in other ways.
Excursions of the Women
As everything connected with the management of the household devolved upon the woman, it became her duty from time to time to make excursions along the streams or in the woods to procure birch bark to make new rolls, or bullrushes for mats of other such things. Accordingly, sometimes, when the man had gone away before sunrise, or perhaps even before the dawn, on some distant hunting or fishing excursion, the woman, after breakfast, would prepare for an expedition of her own. In some cases she would take the children, and at others she would leave them at home under the care of an older brother or sister. The number of children was, however, seldom large enough to make this last arrangement desirable, as the Indian families were almost always small. It has been ascertained that the average number of children was only two.
The mother then would usually take her little ones with her and would embark in her canoe. The baby, if there was one, would be tied to a board and lashed to her back; or by means of being thus secured to a board it could be laid down in the bottom of the boat, or placed in an inclined position against one of the thwarts. It seldom or never cried. There were two reasons for this extraordinary quietness - first, the extremely imperturbable and unexcitable character of the Indian temperament, and in the second place, the fact that the poor child found by experience that he never gained anything by crying.
Having taken her place in her boat the Indian woman would paddle her way up or down the stream, or along the shores of a pond, into retired coves or inlets where the rushes grew, and would gather the supply that she required; and then toward evening would paddle home again, so as to be ready to receive her husband on his return.
Sometimes the object of these excursions was to collect and bring home fuel for the fire. In these cases, in order to prevent the sticks of wood from injuring the canoe, she would first lay poles along the bottom of it to protect the framework and the bark covering. For cutting these poles the Indians had stone hatchets, with handles formed of withes bound round the head, like the handles of the hammers already described. Small saplings could be cut off pretty easily with these tools, by first bending them over in such a way as to bring the fibres of the wood near the ground into a state of high tension, when an inconsiderable blow, even with a dull instrument, would cause the stem to snap off at once.
The fuel itself consisted of such dried fragments of wood as could be found already lying in pieces of a convenient size to be removed, or else so far decayed that they could be easily broken into such pieces.
Education of the Children
The children of these families received no education at all until they came to be old enough to learn to set little traps in the woods for small game, or if girls, to begin to help their mothers to make mats or leggins or mocassins. Sometimes they were stationed in the corn-field while the corn was coming up, in order to drive away the crows and other such plunderers with sticks and stones. The boys would usually take to the woods as soon as they were old enough to find their way among the trees. Their fathers would make bows and arrows for them adapted to their strength, and show them how to set traps for squirrels, rabbits, foxes, and other similar game, and great was their exultation and joy when they found anything taken in them.