Cawasînoˈkwe is seen again sewing the canoe into its form in plate
56, figure 2, and is shown applying pitch to the seams in plate 57,
figure 1. Decorations are made with native dyes such as blue clay and
red ochre. Nowadays white men’s colors are used and clan marks painted
on each end. Ogabeˈgijîg uses a bear picture for his clan mark while
Cawasînoˈkwe belongs to the chicken clan. The finished canoe is seen in
plate 57, fig. 2, as they are launching it upon Flambeau Lake. Very few
Ojibwe can still make a real birch bark canoe in this manner and the
museum considers this series of photographs a valuable one.
The tree is later salvaged for firewood, but the bark may be used right
away as soon as obtained. Emergency trays or buckets may be fashioned
at once in the woods, or the bark may be stored for future use. The
application of heat is all that is necessary to bend it in any shape
desired. Although it is highly inflammable, still buckets of birch bark
can be used to cook meats. Where water covers the inside of the vessel,
it will not burn. The Ojibwe woman saves scraps of birchbark to kindle
or light fires with them. A handy torch which will burn all night can
be made by rolling birch bark tightly. It is often used by the Ojibwe
in lieu of candles.
Nearly any kitchen utensil common to the white man, can be duplicated
in birchbark by the Ojibwe. Even funnels for pouring hot lard are
easily made. The mokoks or baskets are made for gathering and storing
berries, for storing maple sugar, dried fish, meat, or any food.
The birchbark keeps the food from spoiling. Some of the mokoks for
gathering berries or carrying maple sap, have bark handles like bucket
handles, as shown in plate 49, fig. 1, while larger storage baskets
have no handles, but a lid, or sometimes a flap of the basket itself is
used to close it tightly. All sorts of drying trays are made from birch
bark. Shallow trays for winnowing wild rice are also made of it.
Sheets of bark are sewed together with basswood string and made into
birchbark rolls, used as waterproof roofing for wigwams, as shown in
plate 46, fig. 2. Sticks tied across the end of the roll keep it from
splitting and tearing. A fine opportunity to see these bark rolls
was afforded during the Court of Neptune pageant in 1926 on the lake
front in Milwaukee, when the writer brought down over a hundred Ojibwe
Indians from Lac Court Oreilles, Wisconsin, and set up a model old time
village of eleven wigwams. There they lived for a week demonstrating
their former methods of life, jerking meats over open fires, as shown
in plate 47, fig. 2, and practicing their native arts and crafts.
=Low Birch= (_Betula pumila_ L. var. _glandulifera_ Regel), “bîneˈmîc”
[partridge bush]. The Flambeau Ojibwe use the twigs of this dwarf birch
for the ribs of baskets, where sweet grass is the weaving material.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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