612 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



the one who had danced assisted in removing the cMppeezung and 

 carried it to its keeper at the entrance, then returned to her seat. 

 She was the next to dance, and so they continued, always moving 

 from left to right, with their right hands nearer the drum. The 

 dance being over for the time, two large kettles were opened and 

 their steaming contents distributed to all within the circle. The 

 kettles were taken from one of the large wigwams and placed on a 

 mat in front of the log seat. The majority had sheets of birch 

 bark; a few had old tin plates, upon which they were served. First 

 to receive his portion was the Kingfisher ; after him the men, boys, 

 women, and young children in the order named. One of the kettles 

 contained moose meat and wild rice boiled together; the other held 

 a stew of dried blueberries. Thus we left them, in the gathering 

 dusk, and returned to our camp across the lake. 1 



Two days later we again stopped at the camp but a great change 

 had taken place since our previous visit. The annual gathering 

 which was at that time being celebrated had terminated and many of 

 the participants had departed for their homes on other lakes. Only 

 two wigwams and the bare frame of another remained. The settle- 

 ment as it appeared that morning when being approached in a canoe 

 is shown in plate 1, figure 1. On the extreme left in the picture is a 

 moose hide on an upright frame ; just below it is an upturned canoe on 

 the rocky margin of the lake. The bare frame of a conical wigwam is 

 visible and just beyond it a complete structure of the same form. To 

 the right of the large wigwam are several upright posts with others 

 resting above them in a horizontal position. Between these poles 

 were to be suspended a number of white fish which had just been 

 taken in nets. Cords formed of twisted basswood bark were passed 

 through the tails of the fish ; the ends of the cords were then attached 

 to the parallel horizontal poles ; the fish thus hung heads downward 

 and during the long cold season would remain frozen until required 

 for food. Another canoe is drawn up on the shore near the poles, 

 and the path leading from it is visible. 



The two wigw^ams belonged to types found far northward to the 

 subarctic region but which never occurred south of central Minne- 

 sota. Both were formed of long, continuous strips of birch bark, 

 or of several shorter pieces sew T ed together to make one of the de- 

 sired length, known to the O jib way as wigwassapakwei, placed over 

 a frame of straight saplings with others laid on the outside to hold 

 the bark strips in place. The inner surface of the bark served as 

 the outside of the structure and this is likewise true w 7 hen it is used 

 in the construction of canoes. 



1 Bushnell, jr., D. I. An Ojibway Ceremony. American Anthropologist. Vol. 7, No. 1. 

 January-March, 1903. pp. 69-73. 



