What This Awl Means by Janet D. Spector

Author:Janet D. Spector
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-87351-757-7
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2009-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

When the sap began to flow, women tapped the trees with their axes. Then they collected the sap in bark containers and poured it into the “canoes,” from which the kettles were kept filled. Within or just outside the sugar house, the women built a long fire and suspended kettles over it to process the sap. The sap boiled for hours until it became syrup. Boys took charge of the kettles, tending the fire and watching them so they did not boil over. They frequently tested the syrup on the snow, apparently consuming a fair amount in the first few days (C. Eastman [1902] 1971, 27).

The women stored the bulk of the syrup to bring back to their summer villages for feasts, where it would be served with wild rice, parched corn, or dried meat. They made sugar cakes by pouring the boiled syrup into molds made from hollow canes, reeds, or the bills of ducks and geese. They also pulverized and packed some in rawhide cases. Although most work at these camps centered on making the syrup and sugar, boys with bows and arrows hunted small birds, rabbits, chipmunks, and pests drawn to the area by the sugar (C. Eastman [1902] 1971, 25, 27, 28).

MUSKRAT CAMPS

While Dakota women and children lived at the sugar camps, most men were many miles away hunting and trapping muskrats (FIG. 30). Thick muskrat furs collected in the spring months were particularly valuable in the fur trade. As the men left the winter camps for this hunt, they carried little with them except their guns, spears, and traps. The parties established camps near the shallow lakes and marshes where the muskrats lived. The men frequently ate muskrat meat, having neither the time nor ammunition to spend on other game. Pond, who visited one of these camps in 1836, commented on the “carcasses of the slaughtered animals lying everywhere in heaps” with their musky smell permeating the air (Pond [1908] 1986, 54–57).

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