8 6 J^IS TOR V OF CO II A SSE T. 



undertaken. For this he uses fire and adzes and axes, 

 and most of all patience. With stones a spark of fire is 

 struck, and it is kindled into a blaze with pitch pine or 

 birch bark ; then the top of the log begins to be eaten into 

 by a series of little fires that are diligently kept from burn- 

 ing the edges by applying water that the birch bucket has 

 brought from a neighboring stream. At night the fire is put 

 out, lest it spoil the boat by burning through the side. The 

 next day from his camp fire he takes a coal to rekindle the 

 industrial flame in the log. Two inches thick of unburnt 

 wood must be left, so that when the stone adze trims off 

 the blackened surface the sides will be about an inch thick. 

 A large adze with a handle two feet long may be used for 

 roughing down, but it is finished by a small one, much 

 like a chisel, set into a piece of horn or bone for a handle. 

 The canoe then is scraped smooth by shells. The breadth 

 of beam in these dugouts may be increased by filling the 

 finished canoe with water made very hot by dropping in 

 stones from a fire until the wood gets well softened, and 

 then by pressing in stretchers between the edges. 



Ten or twelve days, and sometimes a month, will be 

 used in the making of a small canoe, or tnishoon, as they 

 called these dugouts.* 



After getting their canoes into the water, when it comes 

 time to leave the winter quarters in Beechwood. or else- 

 where, the men choose a place and build some sort of a 

 lodge at the shore, for the winterwinds have demolished 

 the old ones. Then the women begin to lug the household 

 goods to their summer residences. 



They tie up a huge bundle of pots, and wooden spoons, 

 and stone knives, and bone needles, and fish lines with 

 stone sinkers, and fish nets, and their half-finished handi- 

 work of mats or baskets ; then they get this burden of 

 perhaps a hundred pounds in weight upon their stooping- 

 backs, hanging it by a band across their foreheads. They 



* See Roger Williams' Key to the Languages of America, p. loo. 



