In the summer season other of the women folk could be seen making their way on narrow trails through the woods to gather the wild fruits in brake and thicket, the strawberry, wild 'henry, and blueberries, or, in fall to collect the mushrooms and other fungi, to shake down the hickory nuts and walnuts, or in early spring to tap the maple for its sweet sap.

Down at the marsh, while the men were snaring mink or muskrat, or shooting bullfrogs or blackbirds, the girls were gathering roots of sweet-flag, or scratching up the arrow-leaf tubers or artichokes, to fill the vegetal larder.

The elder boys were out on slender bypaths in the wild woods gathering sumac and bark for their elders to smoke, and

INDIAN NOTES

INTRODUCTION

helping themselves to straight dogwood sticks for their arrowshafts, or with the willing aid of the family cur, chasing the rabbits, or scratching out the woodchuck from his lair.

You could find most of the old men around the bark houses doing a little light labor -- repairing arrows and bows, carving bowls and spoons of wood, and fitting handles to tools; and possibly some were fixing gourds with rattles of wild-cherry pits or Jack-in- the-pulpit seeds, or were indulging in the adornment of their persons with paint-stone or dyes of blood-root and sumac.

The old women would be out on another pathway that led to the flower banks where grew the herbs for medicine, scent, and dyes, the mallows and burdocks, ground cedar and pennyroyal, the wild mint and sage, and roots of sweet-flag and cicely.