WATER-CRAFT OF THE BACK-WOODS. 235 
neighboring tribe, and cannot trust their effects in the 
water; or they are perchance migrating to a favorite 
hunting ground, and have with them all their domestic 
utensils, their squaws and children. A boat is posi- 
tively necessary, and it must be made of the materials 
at hand. A fire is kindled, and by it are laid a number 
of long slender poles, formed by trimming off the limbs 
of the saplings growing on the margin of the stream. 
While this is going on, some of the braves start in pur- 
suit of buffalo; two of the stoutest bulls met with, are 
killed and stripped of their skins. These skins are then 
sewed together, the poles having been well heated, the 
longest is selected and bent into the proper form for a 
keel; the ribs are then formed and lashed transversely 
to it, making what would appear to be the skeleton of a 
large animal. This skeleton is then placed upon the 
hairy side of the buffalo skin, when it 1s drawn around 
the frame and secured by holes cut in the skin, and 
hitched on to the ribs; a little pounded slippery-elm 
bark is used to caulk the seams, and small pieces of 
wood cut with a thread-like screw, are inserted in the 
arrow or bullet holes of the hide. 
Thus, in the course of two or three hours, a hand- 
some and durable boat is completed, capable of carrying 
eight or ten men with comfort and safety. 
Passing from the prairie we come to the thick forest, 
and there we find the most perfect of the water-craft of 
the back-woods—the varieties of the canoe. The in- 
