Captives among the Indians : $b first-hand narratives of Indian wars, customs, tortures, and habits of life in colonial timesRowlandson, Mary White
History
Captives among the Indians : $b first-hand narratives of Indian wars, customs, tortures, and habits of life in colonial times
Rowlandson, Mary White
Indian captivities -- Northeastern States
Being very hungry, we kindled a fire, opened the bear, took out the
liver, and wrapped some of the caul-fat round, and put it on a wooden
spit, which we stuck in the ground by the fire to roast; then we
skinned the bear, got on our kettle, and had both roast and boiled, and
also sauce to our meat, which appeared to me to be delicate fare. After
I was fully satisfied I went to sleep; Tontileaugo awoke me, saying,
"Come, eat hearty, we have got meat plenty now."
The next morning we cut down a lynn-tree, peeled bark and made a snug
little shelter, facing the southeast, with a large log betwixt us and
the northwest; we made a good fire before us, and scaffolded up our
meat at one side. When we had finished our camp we went out to hunt;
searched two trees for bears, but to no purpose. As the snow thawed a
little in the afternoon, Tontileaugo killed a deer, which we carried
with us to camp.
Some time in February the four warriors returned, who had taken two
scalps and six horses from the frontiers of Pennsylvania. The hunters
could then scatter out a considerable distance from the winter-cabin
and encamp, kill meat, and bring it in upon horses; so that we
commonly, after this, had plenty of provision.
In this month we began to make sugar. As some of the elm-bark will
strip at this season, the squaws, after finding a tree that would do,
cut it down, and with a crooked stick, broad and sharp at the end, took
the bark off the tree, and of this bark made vessels, in a curious
manner, that would hold about two gallons each; they made above one
hundred of these kind of vessels. In the sugar-tree they cut a notch,
sloping down, and at the end of the notch stuck in a tomahawk; in the
place where they stuck the tomahawk they drove a long chip, in order to
carry the water out from the tree, and under this they set their vessel
to receive it. As sugar-trees were plenty and large here, they seldom
or never notched a tree that was not two or three feet over. They also
made bark vessels for carrying the water that would hold about four
gallons each. They had two brass kettles that held about fifteen
gallons each, and other smaller kettles in which they boiled the water.
But as they could not at times boil away the water as fast as it was
collected, they made vessels of bark that would hold about one hundred
gallons each for retaining the water; and though the sugar-trees did
not run every day, they had always a sufficient quantity of water to
keep them boiling during the whole sugar-season.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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