=_Charles Lanman, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) From "Haw-ho-noo." =_266._= MAPLE-SUGAR-MAKING AMONG THE INDIANS. It is in the month of April, and the hunting season is at an end. Albeit, the ground is covered with snow, the noonday sun has become quite powerful; and the annual offering has been made to the Great Spirit, by the medicine-men, of the first product of one of the earliest trees in the district. This being the preparatory signal for extensive business, the women of the encampment proceed to make a large number of wooden troughs (to receive the liquid treasure), and after these are finished, the various trees in the neighborhood are tapped, and the juice begins to run. In the mean time the men of the party have built the necessary fires, and suspended over them their earthen, brass, or iron kettles. The sap is now flowing in copious streams, and from one end of the camp to the other is at once presented an animated and romantic scene, which continues day and night, until the end of the sugar season. The principal employment to which the men devote themselves, is that of lounging about the encampment, shooting at marks, and playing the moccasin game; while the main part of the labor is performed by the women, who not only attend to the kettles, but employ all their leisure time in making the beautiful birchen mocucks, for the preservation and transportation of the sugar when made; the sap being brought from the troughs to the kettles, by the boys and girls. Less attention than usual is paid by the Indians at such times to their meals; and unless game is very easily obtained, they are quite content to depend upon the sugar alone.