American Indian Ways of Life: An Interpretation of the Archaeology of Illinois and Adjoining AreasDeuel, Thorne
History
American Indian Ways of Life: An Interpretation of the Archaeology of Illinois and Adjoining Areas
Deuel, Thorne
Illinois -- Antiquities; Indians of North America -- Illinois
Women when working apparently wore only a girdle (breech cloth), at
other times a wrap-around skirt of skin with a belt passing over one
shoulder and under the opposite arm. The skirt dates back to Hopewellian
times and was used during the Mississippi period in Indiana and probably
in Illinois. The bosom was covered with a deerskin wrap. Hair was worn
long and fastened behind the head.
Economy
Labor was divided between the men and the women (and children). Men did
the hunting, fighting and made the weapons. The women (and children) did
the other work—the housework, planting and harvesting the crops,
dressing deer and buffalo skins, making twine from bast, weaving cloth
and, on the hunt, carrying the house parts and setting up the camp.
Buffalo meat was preserved by drying and smoking it over a fire in the
hunting camp. Vegetable foods, corn, beans and squash were dried or
parched and buried in containers or in lined pits in the ground and
covered over. Watermelons, muskmelons (?), gourds and tobacco were also
grown. Wild strawberries, paw paws, pecans, lotus roots, wild tubers,
grapes and plums formed part of their diet.
The winter buffalo hunt usually took place a long way from the village.
The hunting units each consisted of several families under a rigid
police system and regulation to prevent the herd from being stampeded by
an over-eager family before all were amply provided with meat.
Violations of hunting regulations were punished by destruction of the
offender’s property to which no resistance was ever attempted. The group
surrounded the herd, at times encircling it with fires made at intervals
near which the hunters stood and killed the stampeding animals. At times
as many as 120 buffalo were killed in a day. The women cut out the
tongues, skinned the animals, and, peeling off the sides of meat, dried
and smoked them on wooden grates over a slow fire. The smoked sides were
carried back to the village on the back, or when practicable in dugout
boats. Carcasses and bones were left on the hunting grounds. Other
animals were stalked by one or two hunters. Dog meat was considered a
great delicacy.
Fish were caught in nets, by hook and line, speared or shot with bow and
arrow. They were dried for preservation. Maple trees were tapped late in
the winter, the sap caught in bark containers and made into a maple
drink or reduced by boiling to syrup and sugar. Corn was ground into
meal and baked into bread, or prepared as hominy.
Vessels and utensils were made of wood or clay, ladles from a section of
the buffalo skull. Fire was produced by the hand drill in the usual
manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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