annual sugar-making. This industry was chiefly followed by the old men and women and the children. The

ade, but these must be bought, begged or borrowed. A maple tree was felled and a log canoe hollowed out, into which the sap was to

y filled with the snows of winter and the withered leaves of the preceding autumn, and it must be cleared for our use. In the meantime a tent was pitched outside for a few days' occupancy. The snow

hich carried most of it off into the Minnesota river. Now the women began to test the trees-moving leisurely among them, axe in hand, and striking a single quick blow, to see if the sap would appear. Trees, like people, have their individual characters; some were ready to yield up th

rch and ash was made a dark-colored sugar, with a somewhat bitter taste, which was used for medicinal purpo

t boil over, and finally, when the sap became sirup, to test it upon the snow, dipping it out with a wooden paddle. So frequent were these tests that for the first day or two we consumed nearly all that could be made; and it was not until the sweetness began to pall that my grandmother set herself in earnest to store up sugar for future use. She made it into cakes of various forms, in birchen molds, and sometimes in hollow canes or reeds, and the bills of ducks and geese

ns. The transgressors were the rabbit and squirrel tribes, and we little boys for once became useful, in shooting them with our bows and arrows. We hunted all over the sug

f a visitor-a bent old man, his hair almost white, and carrying on his back a large bundle of red willow, or kinnikinick, which the

missionaries among his people, and a well-known character in those pioneer days. He brought us word that some of the peaceful sugar-makers near us on the river had been attacked and murdered by roving Ojibways.